Philo's Flaccus: The First Pogrom. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series, Vol. 2)

Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series

Volume 2 Philo’s Flaccus The First Pogrom

Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series General Editor Gregory E. Sterling Associate Editor David T. Runia Editorial Board Harold W. Attridge Ellen Birnbaum John Dillon David Hay Annewies van den Hoek Alan Mendelson Thomas Tobin, S.J. David Winston

Volume 2

Philo’s Flaccus The First Pogrom

Philo of Alexandria Philo’s Flaccus The First Pogrom

Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Pieter W. van der Horst

BRILL

LEIDEN BOSTON •

2003

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Cover design by TopicA (Antoinette Hanekuyk), Leiden.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Horst, Pieter Willem van der. Philo’s Flaccus: the first pogrom: introduction, translation, and commentary / by Pieter W. van der Horst. p. cm. — (Philo of Alexandria commentary series, ISSN 1570-095X ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and indexes. ISBN 90-04-13118-3 (alk. paper) 1. Avillius Flaccus, Governor of Egypt, d. 38 or 39. 2. Jews—Persecutions—Egypt—Alexandria. 3. Alexandria—Egypt—History. 4. Philo, of Alexandria. In Flaccum. I. Philo, of Alexandria. In Flaccum. English. II. Title. III. Series. DS135.E42A4337 2003 932’.022’092—dc21 [B]

ISBN 90 04 13118 3

© Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923 USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherland

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CONTENTS

Preface ...............................................................................................

ix

Abbreviations .....................................................................................

xi

Introduction ...................................................................................... 1. The place of the treatise in the Philonic corpus .................. 2. The contents and structure of the treatise (with an excursus on the sequel) ......................................................... 3. The genre of the treatise........................................................ 4. Main themes of the treatise ................................................... 5. The historical background (with an excursus on Flaccus).. 6. Previous scholarship ............................................................... 7. The text of the treatise ........................................................... 8. The present commentary (with a note on Nachleben) ..........

1 1 6 11 16 18 38 49 51

Translation.........................................................................................

54

Commentary ...................................................................................... I. Flaccus’ persecution of the Jews (§§1-96) ............................. §§ 1-7: Flaccus’ promising start.............................................. §§ 8-20: Flaccus’ degeneration .............................................. §§ 21-24: Flaccus begins to injure the Jews ........................... §§ 25-35: King Agrippa ........................................................... §§ 36-40: Karabas .................................................................... §§ 41-44: The overtures to the pogrom ................................. §§ 45-52: The Jewish point of view......................................... §§ 53-96: The pogrom at its height........................................ II. Punishment and death of Flaccus (§§97-191) ...................... §§ 97-103: The declaration of loyalty .................................... §§ 104-118: Flaccus’ arrest ..................................................... §§ 119-124: Gratitude for Flaccus’ arrest .............................. §§ 125-145: Lampo and Isidorus ........................................... §§ 146-161: Flaccus on trial.................................................... §§ 162-180a: Flaccus at Andros .............................................. §§ 180b-190: Caligula has Flaccus killed ............................... § 191: Epilogue .......................................................................

88 89 89 99 112 114 128 132 138 152 187 187 191 199 207 219 230 240 244

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Bibliography ...................................................................................... 246 Indices ................................................................................................ 1. Index of passages from ancient authors ............................... Philonic texts..................................................................... Biblical passages ................................................................ Jewish documents ............................................................. Christian documents......................................................... Pagan documents..............................................................

262 262 262 266 268 269 270

2. Index of subjects and names (including Greek terms)........ 274

PREFACE

Writing a commentary to Philo’s In Flaccum is a daunting task that I could not have brought to completion without the help of many others. In a more or less random order I would like to mention the people who, one way or another, have helped me over the past two years. Firstly, I want to thank the editors of the series Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series, Gregory Sterling and David Runia, for inviting me to write the present volume. In particular, my friend David Runia has always freely placed at my disposal his vast erudition in matters Philonic. I owe him and Greg Sterling many thanks for the numerous useful suggestions they gave me, saving me from making many an error. I am also grateful to Gé de Vries, the author of the most recent Dutch translation of In Flaccum, for reading the whole manuscript and sharing his valuable insights with me. The same applies to Jan Bremmer, always a rich source of bibliographical and other knowledge. As usual, Klaas Worp was of great assistance in papyrological matters as was Johan Strubbe in solving epigraphical problems. Fik Meijer advised me on nautical issues, as did J.E. Spruit in matters of Roman law. I am also very grateful to Erich Gruen, Walter Ameling, Anders Runesson, and Gideon Bohak for sending me copies of their books or articles, both published and not yet published, from which I profited greatly. Allen Kerkeslager did me the great service of reading the entire manuscript and pointing out several mistakes. I owe thanks to Mark Geller for inviting me to give a lecture on the topic of this book at University College in London and to Tom Tobin for inviting me to present some of my findings at a meeting of the SBL Philo Seminar in Toronto (2002). The critical comments offered at that meeting by John Barclay, Ellen Birnbaum, and Sarah Pearce were most helpful. Thanks are also due to the Faculty of Theology at Utrecht University for allowing me to spend a sabbatical year at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in the year 2001-2002, and to the Netherlands Organization for Research (NWO) for the grant which made the stay at NIAS possible. I owe many thanks to the superb staff at NIAS, of

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which I single out Petry Tyson and Anne Simpson, who corrected the English of this book, and the library staff who provided me with, literally, every publication I needed. The manuscript of this book was completed in the summer of 2002.

ABBREVIATIONS ABD AIPHOS ANRW ARW BDAG

CHJ CIG CIJ CJZC CPJ DBS DDD DNTB ER IGRR GLAJJ JBL JIGRE JIWE JJS JRS JSJ JTS LCL LSJ

Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D.N. Freedman, 6 vols., New York: Doubleday, 1992 Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt Archiv für Religionswissenschaft W. Bauer,Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, rev. ed. by F.W. Danker (based on previous editions by W.F. Arndt & F.W. Gingrich), ChicagoLondon: Chicago University Press, 2000 Cambridge History of Judaism Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. A. Boeckh et al., Berlin, 1828-1877 Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, 2 vols., ed. J.-B. Frey, Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1936-1952 G. Lüderitz, Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983 Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols., edd. V.A. Tcherikover & A. Fuks, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957-1964 Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible K. van der Toorn, B. Becking & P.W. van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed., LeidenGrand Rapids: Brill-Eerdmans, 1999 C.A. Evans & S.E. Porter (eds.), Dictionary of New Testament Background, Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000 The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade, 16 vols., New York: Macmillan – London: Collier Macmillan, 1987 Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes, 3 vols, edd. R. Cagnat et al., Paris: Gabalda, 1906-1927 Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, ed. M. Stern, 3 vols., Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974-1984 Journal of Biblical Literature W. Horbury & D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993-1995 Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library H.G. Liddell, R. Scott & H.S. Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940

xii NP NT NTS OCD OGIS OLD PW (RE) R-R RAC RE RBLG RGG SB SBLSP SCI SPhA SVF TAPA ZPE

abbreviations Der Neue Pauly, Enzyklopädie der Antike hrsg. von H. Cancik & H. Schneider, Stuttgart – Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 1996 – ... Novum Testamentum New Testament Studies S. Hornblower & A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, ed. W. Dittenberger, 2 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel, 1903-1905 P.G.W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft R. Radice & D.T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria. An Annotated Bibliography 1937-1986, Leiden: Brill, 1988 Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum see PW P. Boned Colera e.a. (eds.), Repertorio bibliográfico de la lexicografía griega, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1998 Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4. Aufl., eds. H.D. Betz et alii, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999-... Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten, ed. F. Preisigke, F. Bilabel, E. Kiessling & H.A. Rupprecht, Berlin: W. de Gruyter – Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 22 vols., 1913 – 2001 Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Scripta Classica Israelica Studia Philonica Annual Stoicorum veterum fragmenta Transactions of the American Philological Association Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

INTRODUCTION1

1. The place of the treatise in the Philonic corpus Together with the Legatio ad Gaium, the work called In Flaccum has an exceptional place in the corpus of Philonic writings. Most of Philo’s œuvre is of a philosophical and exegetical nature (for Philo philosophy and exegesis coincide) but this cannot be said of the two treatises that are commonly dubbed his ‘historical’ treatises. The word ‘historical’ is often put between quotation marks, and rightly so. Philo does intend to write history but he does so not for reasons of historical interest. His real concern in the two historical treatises is not primarily of a historiographical, but rather of a theological, or pastoral, nature. There is no better way of illustrating this than quoting the final line of In Flaccum where he says about the main protagonist of his story, Flaccus: “Thus he became an indubitable proof that the Jewish people had not been deprived of the help of God” (§191). He takes up the same theme again in the sequel to Flacc., in the opening paragraphs of Legat., where he says: “Some people have come to disbelieve that God exercises providence for humanity, and particularly for the nation of suppliants (i.e. Israel)” (§3). In other words, what Philo is attempting to do in his treatise In Flaccum (and also in the Legatio), is to convince those of his coreligionists who have begun to doubt that God can and will intervene on their behalf, that he did intervene and that therefore there is no reason for doubt or disbelief. His pastoral concern is apparent also from the fact that the whole of In Flaccum has been structured as a kind of diptych: the first half about the sufferings of the Jews is mirrored exactly in the second half,2 not only because both halves are of equal length (§§1-96 ~ §§97-191), but also because, as Philo 1 Terminological note. In the present work the term ‘pogrom’ is used not in the original sense it had in Russian, namely ‘destruction’ in general, but in the more specialized sense the word had acquired by the time it was taken up in other European languages, namely “organized and officially tolerated massacre and looting of Jews.” The terms ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ are avoided not only because of their anachronistic nature but also since they are inadequate and misleading. They have been substituted by ‘Jew-hatred’ and ‘anti-Jewish.’ 2 Alston 1997:166.

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has Flaccus himself confess, “all the mad acts that I have committed against the Jews I have now suffered myself” (§170; in this very same paragraph Flaccus says that it is true what the Jews say about God’s providence for his people!). So, Philo’s work is first and foremost a plea for belief in divine justice, a theodicy, and as such also, as a German translator of the work has rightly called it, a Trostschrift, a piece of consolation literature.3 It is, however, more than that because Philo here had a twofold audience in mind, but we defer treatment of that aspect to the end of section 3. This brings us to the question of its genre, but before that will be dealt with (in section 3), we first have to raise the question of why Philo wrote these exceptional treatises, which deviate so much from the usual pattern in his exegetical writings, in which the biblical text of the Pentateuch is always his point of departure. The reason for this deviation must be sought in the historical circumstances of the Jewish community in Alexandria in the years 38-41 CE. In 38 tensions between Jews and Greeks in the city had mounted to the highest pitch. Never before had the relationships between Jews and Greeks deteriorated to such a degree of overt hostility, and, consequently, violence broke out. Afterwards both parties sent embassies to Rome in order to plead their cause before the emperor. The Greeks chose their most powerful and prestigious personalities (persons such as the gymnasiarch Isidorus and the scholar Apion) to lead their embassy (of five persons). The Jews did the same by asking Philo to be the head of their deputation (five persons as well). There can be little doubt that Philo is referring to these events when he writes the following in the opening passage of Spec. 3.1-6, a typically Philonic passage that deserves to be quoted in full: There was a time when I had leisure for philosophy and for the contemplation of the universe and its contents, when I made its spirit my own in all its beauty and loveliness and true blessedness, when my constant companions were divine themes and verities, wherein I rejoiced with a joy that never cloyed or sated. I had no base or abject thoughts nor grovelled in search of reputation or of wealth or bodily comforts, but seemed always to be borne aloft into the heights with a soul possessed by some God-sent inspiration, a fellow traveller with the sun and moon and the whole heaven and universe. (2) Ah then I gazed down from the upper air, and straining the mind’s eye beheld, as from some commanding peak, the multitudinous worldwide spectacles of earthly things, and blessed my lot in that I had escaped by 3

Gerschmann 1964:124.

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3

main force from the plagues of mortal life. (3) But, as it proved, my steps were dogged by the deadliest of mischiefs, the hater of the good, envy, which suddenly set upon me and did not cease to pull me down with violence till it had plunged me in the ocean of civil cares, in which I am swept away, unable even to raise my head above the water. (4) Yet amid the groans I hold my own, for planted in my soul from my earliest days I keep the yearning for culture which ever has pity and compassion for me, lifts me up and relieves my pain. To this I owe it that sometimes I raise my head and with the soul’s eyes — dimly indeed because the mist of extraneous affairs has clouded their clear vision — I yet make shift to look around me in my desire to inhale a breath of life pure and unmixed with evil. (5) And if unexpectedly I obtain a spell of fine weather and a calm from civic turmoils, I take wings and ride the waves and almost tread the lower air, wafted by the breezes of knowledge which often urges me to come to spend my days with her, a truant as it were from merciless masters in the shape not only of men but of affairs, which pour in upon me like a torrent from different sides. (6) Yet it is well for me to give thanks to God even for this, that though submerged I am not sucked down into the depths, but can also open the soul’s eyes, which in my despair of comforting hope I thought had now lost their sight, and am irradiated by the light of wisdom, and am not given over to lifelong darkness. So behold me daring, not only to read the sacred messages of Moses, but also in my love of knowledge to peer into each of them and unfold and reveal what is not known to the multitude (transl. Colson, LCL).

Even though Philo does not make explicitly clear what he is referring to when speaking about his being drawn down from his lofty meditations and speculations into the hard reality of politics, and even though the idealization of leisure that permits philosophical life is sometimes a literary topos,4 there still can be little doubt that it is the dramatic events of the years 38-41 CE that he has in mind here.5 He mentions ‘envy’ (fqovno") as the main cause of the disturbances to which he had, willy-nilly, to expose himself (§3), and it is the same motif that he mentions in Flacc. 29 and 30 as the driving force behind the riots that broke out in 38: The Greeks were bursting from envy when the Jewish king Agrippa arrived in Alexandria because they were vexed by the idea that a Jew had become a king, and that to such a degree as if each of them had been deprived of an ancestral kingdom. Flaccus was provoked by his companions into the same state of envy as their own (cf. also Legat. 48 where this motif recurs). 4

Allen Kerkeslager drew my attention to Pliny, Ep. 1.9; 2.8; 2.17; 5.6 etc. I realize that there is a possibility that Philo refers here to events other than the riots in 38 CE, but I am not convinced by these alternative suggestions (see next note). 5

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It was this envy, says Philo, that finally led to the eruption of violence in the summer of 38 CE. Even though, then, we cannot reach absolute certainty about which events he refers to in Spec. 3.1-6, he is most likely hinting at the riots of 38.6 That is to say that Philo had to embark upon political affairs, but much against his will, as this passage makes abundantly clear.7 No other conclusion can be drawn than that such a strong appeal was made to Philo to throw his weight into the scales on behalf of the Jewish community that he could not decline (was it because his brother Alexander, who held a leading position in the administration of the city, had in the meantime been imprisoned [Josephus, Ant. 19.276]?). This must have been extremely hard for our philosopher, who so much loved to be left alone in his study. Even so, he says that, in spite of the fact that it was very difficult for him to keep his head above the water, he had to thank God for the fact that he did not drown. Writing the historical treatises under consideration was part of an enterprise that was very unusual to Philo, and for that reason the treatises are unusual within the Philonic corpus as a whole. We cannot be sure about the exact date of composition and publication of In Flaccum. Of course, the terminus post quem is 38 CE, but exactly how long after the pogrom Philo penned down his report of the events of that year is unknown. It stands to reason, however, that the work stood in the service of his task as leader of the Jewish embassy to Gaius in 39-40 CE. That is to say, Philo almost certainly collected data and evidence he could use in his plea for the Jewish cause before the emperor, and he undoubtedly made notes which were later used in the composition of his book. But how much later he composed In Flaccum, we do not know, although it is reasonable to assume that it was not long after his lengthy visit to Italy where he got into contact with Gaius. The fact that in Flacc. 180 Philo speaks about this emperor with such undisguised hostility may suggest that he published the work only after Caligula’s death in January 41, but we cannot be sure whether Philo may not have been courageous enough to use such strong language even when the emperor was still alive. Be that as it may, 40 or 41 was most probably the period in which Philo published In Flaccum. 6 7

For a different view see Goodenough 1926. Williamson 1989:7-18.

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This brings us to the final point of this chapter. In his Historia Ecclesiastica, published about 325 CE, the church historian Eusebius writes the following: “Philo has reported in five books what happened to the Jews during the reign of Gaius: the insanity of the emperor, how he proclaimed himself a god and committed innumerable insolent deeds, the misery of the Jews in his time, his own mission to Rome on behalf of his compatriots in Alexandria, and how he received nothing but laughter and ridicule from Gaius in defending their ancestral laws and narrowly escaped with his life” (Hist. Eccl. 2.5.1). Which are the five books Eusebius has in mind? There has been much speculation about this passage, but no consensus has been reached. 8 It is not necessary to repeat the wide variety of interpretations of what Eusebius was referring to in his mention of the five books. Let me rather state succinctly what I think is the most reasonable explanation. Both the opening and the closing paragraphs of In Flaccum make it clear that Philo wrote a separate book on Sejanus’ persecution of the Jews as well (see the commentary ad §§1 and 191), a work that preceded In Flaccum. Most scholars agree that this work must have been one of the five mentioned by Eusebius, even though the latter refers only to events during Caligula’s reign (Sejanus died before Caligula’s rise to power), since only a few lines later Eusebius corrects himself and speaks about Philo’s description of the fate of the Jews under Tiberius and Sejanus (2.5.7). Since the Legatio closes with the words, “Thus I have set forth quite briefly the reason for Gaius’ hatred for the whole Jewish nation, but I must now proceed to the palinode” (373),9 it is also evident that a further book will have followed. So we have already four books. Since Eusebius says in his Chronicle that the work on Sejanus was the second in the row of five,10 the lacking fifth one must be the number one in the series. In Hist. Eccl. 2.5.7, Eusebius says that Philo wrote not only about Sejanus’ attempts to eradicate the whole Jewish nation, but also about how “in Judaea, Pilate (...) made an attempt on the temple in Jerusalem, contrary to the privileges accorded the Jews, and harrassed them severely.” Now this 8 For a survey see Box 1939:xxxiii-xxxvii; Smallwood 1961:36-43; Pelletier 1967:14-16; Morris in Schürer 1973-1987: III.859-864. 9 Smallwood 1961:325 interprets the ‘palinode’ here as a story of the fall of Gaius, “represented as divine retribution for his attack on the Jews, and the change for the better which Jewish fortunes underwent after Claudius’ succession.” In view of Philo’s procedure in Flacc., Smallwood is certainly right. 10 See the text(s) quoted in full by Morris 1987:860 note 198.

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can hardly refer to the occasional remarks about Pilate in the extant books.11 So we have to postulate a separate work on Pilate. Then most probably the five works referred to by Eusebius, of which three have been lost, were: (1) the work on Pilate; (2) the work on Sejanus; (3) In Flaccum; (4) Legatio ad Gaium; (5) the palinodia. Another possibility (proposed by Morris 1987:861) is: (1) general introduction to the theme of persecution and providence; (2) a work on persecutions in the time of Tiberius by Sejanus and Pilate; (3) In Flaccum; (4) Legatio; (5) the palinode about the downfall of Gaius. No certainty can be reached in this matter, however, and the above sketched solutions are no more than guesses, but very reasonable ones.12 2. The contents and structure of the treatise (with an excursus on the sequel) As has already been remarked, the work is divided like a diptych into two parts of equal length which mirror each other: §§1-96 deal with Flaccus’ persecution of the Jews; §§ 97-191 treat the divine punishment and death of Flaccus. We will now summarize the contents according to the following structure: I. Flaccus’ persecution of the Jews (§§1-96) §§ 1-7: Flaccus’ promising start §§ 8-20: Flaccus’ degeneration §§ 21-24: Flaccus begins to injure the Jews §§ 25-35: King Agrippa §§ 36-40: Karabas §§ 41-44: The overtures to the pogrom §§ 45-52: The Jewish point of view §§ 53-96: The pogrom at its height II. Punishment and death of Flaccus (§§97-191) §§ 97-103: The declaration of loyalty §§ 104-118: Flaccus’ arrest §§ 119-124: Gratitude for Flaccus’ arrest §§ 125-145: Lampo and Isidorus §§ 146-161: Flaccus on trial §§ 162-180a: Flaccus at Andros §§ 180b-190: Caligula has Flaccus killed §§ 191: Epilogue 11

So rightly Morris 1987:860. The problem of the title of In Flaccum will be discussed at the beginning of the commentary. 12

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(1-7) Flaccus was appointed Roman governor of Egypt and Alexandria by the emperor Tiberius. In the first five years he demonstrated his great and exemplary ability in handling his responsibilities. (8-20) That began to change, however, when Tiberius was succeeded on the throne by Caligula in 37. This event marked the onset of Flaccus’ degeneration. He first became depressed and anxious because he had supported the rival candidate for this succession and he had also played an active role in the prosecution of Caligula’s mother, Agrippina. (21-24) At this juncture the leaders of the anti-Jewish party (or parties) in Alexandria advised him to win back the emperor’s favor by giving them his support in their planned actions against the Jews in the city. Bit by bit Flaccus began to hurt the Jews, first by demonstrating partiality as a judge in lawsuits, later by other, more drastic measures. (25-35) The climax came when Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, visited Alexandria on his way from Rome to his new kingdom in Palestine that he had just received from his friend Caligula. He was enthusiastically welcomed by the Jews. (36-40) The enemies, however, reacted furiously and staged a mock ceremony, bringing a local lunatic into the gymnasium, greeting him with royal honors and hailing him ‘our Lord.’ Instead of punishing the instigators of this insult to a friend of the emperor, Flaccus turned a blind eye. (41-44) This encouraged the enemies to go on and erect statues of the emperor in Jewish synagogues: an act of utter desecration. (45-53) Now there existed a real danger that the riots would spread to other parts of the Empire, since Jews live everywhere. Even though Jerusalem always remains their mother-city, the countries where they live are their fatherland. (54-96) The desecration of synagogues was followed by the issuing of a decree by Flaccus to the effect that Jews were from now on to be regarded as foreigners and aliens in the city. This opened the floodgates to massive plundering of Jewish houses and shops and rounding up the Jews in one quarter of the city, where already a great number of Jews lived, so that an overcrowded ghetto was created where the Jews had to live under terrible circumstances. Synagogues and houses were sacked and set on fire. Then followed a long series of events of unchecked savagery by the Alexandrians, when they caught Jews who strayed outside the ghetto in search for help. Jews were set upon by

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mobs, who patrolled the edge of the ghetto in search of their victims. They beat them up, or burned them to death, or bound them together and dragged them through the market square, kicking them and trampling on them until their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. At the end of August, on Caligula’s birthday, a large group of Jews was arrested, marched through the streets to the theatre where they were beaten and forced to eat pork. If they refused, they were finished off by way of birthday celebration for the emperor. Many also died of diseases that broke out because of the atrocious conditions in the ghetto. (97-103) But the tide began to turn. On Gaius’ accession to the throne the Jewish community of Alexandria had delivered to Flaccus a declaration of loyalty to the new emperor with the request to pass it on to Gaius, which he said he would do but did not. Fortunately, when Agrippa heard of the matter, he intervened to rectify it. (104-118) Some weeks later a detachment of troops suddenly arrived from Rome, sent by Caligula, to arrest Flaccus. He was arrested during the feast of Sukkoth. (119-124) In prayers and hymns the Jews offered thanks to God for his sudden intervention. (125-145) The men who were mentioned earlier as leaders of the anti-Jewish faction, which had urged him to secure his position by persecuting the Jews, now appeared as his accusers, namely the archcriminals Isidorus and Lampo. (146-161) Flaccus stood trial and was condemned; his property was confiscated and he himself sentenced for deportation to the miserable island of Andros in the Aegean Sea. His journey to Andros was a great humiliation because the people who had seen him on his way to assume the office of governor of Egypt now saw him back as a deportee. (162-180a) His plight after his arrival at Andros is great. He holds dramatic soliloquies and even says prayers in which he acknowledges that his punishment by the God of Israel is just. (180b-190) In Rome, Caligula comes to the conclusion that the fate of his many deportees is too mild a punishment and he orders them to be executed; Flaccus is at the top of the list. Soldiers land on Andros and chase Flaccus who immediately realizes what is going to happen to him. He fights back with the only result that “his body received the same number of wounds as that of the Jews who had been unlawfully murdered by him.” Then he is murdered.

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(191) Thus “he became an indubitable proof that the Jewish people had not been deprived of the help of God.” Excursus: The sequel Philo describes the sequel to the events of the summer/autumn of 38 CE in his Legatio ad Gaium. What I shall present here, however, is not just a summary of this treatise but a tentative historical reconstruction based on both Legat. and the famous Epistle of Claudius to the Alexandrians and some other circumstantial evidence, mainly from Josephus. Since a detailed treatment of this matter is the subject of the commentary on Legat., this excursus will be kept very brief (and without references to sources); it serves only to wet the appetite of those readers who would like to know how things in Alexandria developed after Flaccus’ death. Probably rather soon after Flaccus’ arrest a certain degree of order was restored in Alexandria by the new governor, Vitrasius Pollio. In the spring of 39 CE, an embassy of (probably) five Jews, headed by Philo, and another of five Greeks, headed by Apion or Isidorus, left for Rome in order to get a decision about the matters at stake from the emperor Gaius. He had them wait for months on end, however, before granting them an audience. The primary claim of the Jews was the restoration of their freedom to live according to their own laws. Whether the issue of their citizenship was also raised is a moot point, although it cannot be excluded. The Greeks tried to prejudice Gaius by reminding him that it was only the Jews who refused to sacrifice to him. When the Jews reacted by saying that they had offered hecatombs on his behalf, the emperor acutely remarked that offering sacrifices for him was not the same as sacrificing to him. Then he got a report that Jews in Palestine had pulled down an altar dedicated to him as a god. In a furious reaction he sent orders to the governor of Syria to set up his statue in the temple of Jerusalem. The dismay of the Jews in Palestine was so great that Agrippa I tried to intervene, succesfully — it would seem — for the emperor withdrew his order. When later Gaius reinstated the order, the governor protracted the matter by masterful inactivity. Gaius came to learn of this and ordered his suicide, but before the letter with the order to commit suicide reached the governor, Gaius himself had been murdered (in January 41 CE). Upon hearing this news, the Jews of Alexandria took up their arms and attacked their former opponents. The new prefect

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informed the new emperor, Claudius, who quickly sent an edict to the Alexandrians in which he confirmed the Jews in all the rights they had enjoyed before Gaius’ principate and warned both sides against a repetition of the riots. In another edict he conceded to all the Jews in the empire the same rights as those enjoyed by the Alexandrian Jews, but he also warns the Jews not to set at naught the religious beliefs of the non-Jewish peoples. Again rival embassies hastened to Rome — the Jews even sent two (or another apart from Philo’s, a problem I have to leave aside here) 13 — each of them blaming their opponents for the renewed troubles. Claudius then sent his famous letter of November 41 (which was spectacularly rediscovered on a papyrus in the early twenties of the last century: P. Lond. 1912 = CPJ 153). It is a considered an acid reply in which he distances himself from the policy of Gaius and urges the Alexandrian Greeks “to behave gently and kindly towards the Jews who have inhabited the same city for many years, and not to dishonor any of their customs in their worship of their god, as they did in the time of the god Augustus and as I too, having heard both sides, have confirmed.” But in the same breath the emperor also sternly warns the Jews “not to aim at more than they have previously had (...) and not to intrude themselves into the games presided over by the gymnasiarchs and the cosmetes [i.e., to strive for citizenship], since they enjoy what is their own and in a city which is not their own they possess an abundance of all good things.” If we are to believe the largely novellistic Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs (= C P J 154-156), shortly afterwards the same emperor had Isidorus and Lampo, who were the driving forces behind the pogrom according to Philo because they inspired Flaccus to his anti-Jewish actions, brought to court. They insulted him with extremely rude anti-Jewish remarks, also aimed at his friend Herod Agrippa, and Claudius condemned them to death. Literature: Tcherikover-Fuks 1957/64: I.69-74; Smallwood 1976:242255; Schürer 1973/87: I.391-398; Mélèze-Modrzejewski 1995:173-183; Schäfer 1997:145-156; Smallwood 1999:183-187.

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See Gruen 2002:290 note 186 for discussion and literature.

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3. The genre of the treatise As was already said in the first chapter of the Introduction, Philo’s In Flaccum is not just a piece of historiography, it is more than that. Philo’s book is, however, not exceptional in so far as there is no historical document from antiquity that strives for completely detached or disinterested objectivity. It was part and parcel of the art of the historian in ancient times to convey a message, either moral or philosophical or religious or anti-religious, and the ‘events’ narrated were used for this purpose. In this connection, one speaks of ‘rhetorical’ historiography or of ‘dramatic’ or ‘tragic’ or ‘empathic’ historiography, but there is no generally accepted designation for the genre. The difference with non-rhetorical or non-dramatic historiography is that, for instance, instead of “Two million Armenians died during World War I,” one writes, “Millions of completely innocent Armenian men, women and children, became the victims of a brutal massacre by the ruthless and criminal Turkish regime!” The information in the second formulation is not false, but its phraseology is full of pathos and is intended to evoke emotions. And it is this intention that often has exaggeration follow in its wake. That is not to say that ancient historical texts should be thrown out into the bin as having little value for the historian. After all, they were written by the same historians who were developing criteria for writing reliable historiographical works: trustworthy sources, eyewitness accounts, personal observation etc. But at the same time it is clear that their use of rhetorical and dramatic techniques must make us pause and see with how many grains of salt or even downright skepticism we should take their statements. And this is what makes so much of ancient historical writing such a striking mixture of fact and fiction, of legend and history. It is clear that Philo could not have had any knowledge at all of the thoughts of Flaccus when he was in exile. So when he writes about Flaccus’s inner monologues, his utterances of despair, yes even quotes the prayers he said, all of that is pure invention by our author. It seems Philo has been inspired by Greek novels here. There, too, one finds jeremiadic monologues by the protagonists, in which they lament their fate, their loneliness, their horrible plight, their despair, their fear of death.14 This means that a great part of what Philo relates in the second half of In Flaccum is simply unhistorical; only the 14

Gerschmann 1964:126.

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bare framework, that is, Flaccus’ arrest, condemnation, exile and death at Andros are historical facts. But what about the first half, which deals with the events in Alexandria in the summer of 38 CE? Here he writes about things that every one of his readers in the city could easily check. Many of them had been eyewitnesses and, moreover, when he published the work, the events were still fresh in their memory (Philo published his work not later than 41 CE). Philo would have made a fool of himself if he had distorted the facts too drastically. He may have exaggerated (he was probably even expected to do so by his fellow Jews); he may have left out important information that was not conducive to his goal (which he probably did); but he could never have got away with a complete invention of ‘events’ that everyone knew, and could prove, had never taken place. What Philo presents in In Flaccum is dramatic or rhetorical historiography: it aims at evoking emotions, indignation and anger, pity and sadness, piety and awe for the deity. That is exactly what he wants to do, as did so many of his contemporary fellow historians. But, as should be clear by now, in spite of this, we can, with due caution, use the first half of the work In Flaccum as a source for the history of a Jewish community in the Diaspora at the beginning of our era. Philo’s work is a mixture of historiography, pastoral theology, apologetics and theodicy, “it draws on various genres but belongs to none, a mélange that represents primarily the inventiveness of its creator.” 15 He describes events but does so in such a way that his Jewish readers are called upon not to doubt God’s providence. While trying to demonstrate to his Roman audience that no people under the sun is more faithful to the Roman imperial family and stands closer to the values of the Roman elite of their time, at the same time Philo tries to console his co-religionists for the calamity that has befallen them by arguing that there has been no moment that God had abandoned them. So Philo tries to do several things at the same time, and this raises the issue of his intended audience that we will deal with in a moment. First, however, we have to cast a glance at a striking parallel in early Christian literature. Almost at the end of his De mortibus persecutorum, written in the second decade of the 4th century CE, Lactantius says: “In this way God vanquished all the persecutors of His Name, so that no stem or 15

Gruen 2002:191, there said, however, of the Testament of Abraham.

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root of theirs remained” (50.1; ed. Creed 1984:75). This is the conclusion of a work in which the author describes the miserable fate of all those who tried to annihilate the adherents of the Christian faith and were consequently punished very severely by God. Here Lactantius stands in a long tradition: The theme of the violent death of those who fight against or resisted the or a deity (or its worshippers), called qeomavcoi since Euripides, reaches back till far in the preChristian period,16 and there can be little doubt that Philo was acquainted with it. The motif of qeomacei'n is as old as Homer, but we meet it in connection with historical persons not before Herodotus. That historian tells us that the Persian king Cambyses purposefully humiliated the Egyptian god Apis, whose sacred bull was wounded by him, with the result that Cambyses was later fatally wounded in the same part of his body where he himself had once smitten Apis (3.64; a motif that we encounter also, mutatis mutandis, in Flacc. 189). Cambyses is only the first in a long row of sinners who were punished for their impiety, quite often by being eaten by worms (skwlhkovbrwto", cf. Acts 12:23), according to tradition; shipwreck is the favorite kind of punishment for atheists (e.g., Diagoras and Protagoras); further we come across insanity, being struck by lightning, being torn apart by wild animals or humans, being burnt etc.17 From Jewish tradition we have, e.g., the biblical story about the punishment of the Egyptian Pharaoh in the book of Exodus, of the Sodomites in Genesis 18, and of Haman in the book of Esther (ch. 7); further the apocryphal stories about the horrible fate of Holophernes in the book of Judith (ch. 13), Antiochus IV in 2 Maccabees (ch. 9), Heliodorus in 2 Macc. (ch. 3); but all of these are of a legendary nature (Antiochus’ being eaten by worms shows special indebtedness to the Greek tradition). The arch-Jew-hater Apion, who had ridiculed circumcision, died from a tumor on his genitals, says Josephus (C. Ap. 2.143), but the historical value of this tradition is debatable as well, as is the case with the rabbinic stories about Titus’ death (b. Gittin 56b, Bereshith Rabba 10.7, Vayikra Rabba 22.3, Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer 49).18 The motif is taken up also in early Christianity. The New Testament stories about the death of Judas (albeit suicide, see Matt. 27:5 16

Nestle 1936; Speyer 1981; Creed 1984. See Speyer 1981:1017-1020. 18 For more examples see, besides Nestle 1936 and Speyer 1981, also Van der Horst 1983. 17

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and Acts 1:18) and that of Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:20-23) are the earliest examples. In the second and third centuries CE stories are circulating about similar fates of Pilate (the source of Eusebius, Hist.Eccl. 2.7) and of the persecutor Claudius Lucius Herminianus (Tertullian, Scap. 3).19 There can be little doubt that the author of De mortibus persecutorum stood in this Graeco-Jewish-Christian tradition of what Nestle has called “Legenden vom Tod der Gottesverächter” (Nestle 1936). In most of the stories by Lactantius, punishment by God has the form of the persecutor’s being violently murdered by his enemies, exactly as in Philo’s In Flaccum. Philo himself stood at the crossroads of Greek and biblical traditions in this respect, and he himself may have served as the springwell for Lactantius and his sources.20 If it is the declared purpose of Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum “to testify to all men as to God’s revelation of His greatness in the punishment and destruction of the enemies of his name,”21 almost the same could be said of the purpose of In Flaccum. The most recent editor of De mortibus persecutorum remarks that this writing “can almost be seen as a piece of epideictic oratory devoted not to encomium but to vituperatio, designed to hold up to execration the characters of the persecuting emperors; but (...) its true antecedents lie in the Jewish background to Christian literature; the second book of Maccabees (...) has almost precisely the same combination of detailed historical record and praise of divine judgment.”22 He could have added a reference to Philo’s In Flaccum.23 He also points to an embarassing element in Lactantius’ work, namely the “uncharitable delight it seems to take in the sufferings of the discomfited persecutors” (Creed 1984:xxxix), again a feature one comes across frequently in the second part of In Flaccum. All this is not to say that Lactantius used Philo as one of his sources (even though that cannot be excluded), my point is rather that Philo’s work stands in a long tradition that begins in classical Greece and finds its apogee in that fourthcentury Christian author.24 There is no doubt that De mortibus persecutorum was primarily addressed to the author’s fellow-Christians who could join in rejoicing at the discomfiture of their persecutors, but there is also an element of warning in it, a warning not improbably 19 20 21 22 23 24

Other examples, also later than Lactantius, in Speyer 1981:1027-1041. Runia 1993 does not discuss this question. Creed 1984:xxxv. Creed 1984:xxxviii. Nestle 1936:263 does mention it in this connection. Cf. Morris 1987:861.

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addressed to Roman rulers not to relapse in the old errors. And this brings us back again to the problem of what kind of audience was envisaged by Philo for In Flaccum. In the scholarly literature one often finds either-or positions as far as the target audience of In Flaccum is concerned: either Jewish or Roman. Those who emphasize the theme of divine providence as the purple thread throughout the treatise plead for an exclusively Jewish audience, whereas those who emphasize the striking length of the description of Flaccus’ ruination and death (half of the work!) plead for a Roman audience, more specifically for an audience in terms of Flaccus’ successor, who should be warned in this way not to make the same fatal mistakes as his predecessor. In my opinion, neither position is compelling and neither can be proved to be wrong. This points the way to a more balanced solution. There can be no doubt that Philo had indeed a Jewish audience in mind because, as was already said, he indicates in the final sentence of the work (§191 quoted above) that he hopes to have made clear that God never abandons his own people. But at the same time the work gives several indications that Philo had also a non-Jewish audience in mind. He explains Jewish customs in a way that was unnecessary for Jewish readers and only makes sense in terms of a pagan audience. For instance, when speaking about the fact that the Jews were in great distress during the festival of Sukkoth, Philo writes: “It was the national Jewish festival of the autumn equinox, in which it is the custom of the Jews to live in tents” (§116). This kind of information can only have been meant for non-Jewish readers. In §25 he tells us that the Jewish king Agrippa was the grandson of king Herod and that he received from the emperor the former tetrarchy of Philip as his kingdom, again the kind of information that presupposes a nonJewish audience. Another example is Philo’s remark to the effect that Alexandria had five districts, named after the first letters of the alphabet. “Two of them are called the Jewish quarters because the majority of the inhabitants are Jews. In the other quarters there also live quite a number of Jews, although scattered about” (§55). And in §37 he informs the reader that papyrus was ‘native’ to Egypt. All this is definitely not the kind of information that an Alexandrian Jewish audience needed to have. And more instances could be given which make it very probable that Philo envisaged also a Roman audience. There is certainly more than one grain of truth in Goodenough’s

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statement, “He wrote this document (...) to give it to the new prefect. He does not, still, dare to give direct instructions to the prefect, but he has so obviously schematized the events of the past few years and the reasons for the fall of Flaccus that the new prefect must perfectly have understood that he was faced with a people whom one offended at one’s peril.”25 Or, as Ellen Birnbaum put it, by his emphasis on divine providence “Philo may, on the one hand, wish to bolster the spirits of his fellow Jews during a time of suffering; on the other hand, he may also wish to sound a warning to Gentiles to stop their maltreatment of his people.”26 So it would seem safe to assume that he had a dual readership in mind.27 This is in itself not a very surprising or unexpected conclusion. The conflict described in Flacc. was one between Jews and non-Jews. Philo himself, although a Jew, stood with one leg in the world of the non-Jews; he stood on the threshhold between these two worlds. No wonder that he wanted to address audiences on both sides of that threshhold. After all, he had a message for both parties involved in the conflict, a message that had to be delivered clearly and loudly.28 4. Main themes of the treatise (a) Providence and Justice After what has been said in the previous chapters, it need hardly be repeated that the motif of providence looms large in Flacc., even though the word provnoia is used only three times in the whole treatise (§§125, 126, 170; the word occurs 80 times in Philo’s œuvre as a whole). But Philo implicitly refers to this concept in §§102, 104, 107, 115, 121, 146, 191 as well. When providence is spoken of or implied by Philo, it is always an activity of God on behalf of his people or those who live in accordance with his will. But there is another side to that coin, and that is justice (divkh), or rather Justice (Divkh),

25

Goodenough 1962:59. Birnbaum 1996:21. 27 Here I disagree with Niehoff 2001:39-44. Hay 1991:50-52 even suggests that Philo may have had in mind future generations as readers when he wrote his works. 28 According to Cheon 1997 the Wisdom of Solomon was also written in reaction to the pogrom in 38. He argues that the function of the Exodus story in Wisdom was “to provide the self-understanding of the Alexandrian Jewish community just after the riot against Jews in 38 CE. It not only intended to provide hope and consolation for his community, but also to counteract the anti-Semitic prejudice of the Gentiles” (149). For a similar position see Winston 1979. 26

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since Philo often personifies the concept (see, e.g., Flacc. 104, 107, 115, 146, 189). Justice becomes manifest in God’s action against his opponents or the enemies of his people; it is justitia retributiva. punitive justice or nemesis. Philo uses divkh no less than ten times in Flacc. (145 times in his whole œuvre). The motif of the punishment and death of the enemy of God and his people plays as prominent a role in Flacc. as God’s providence. God’s beneficient providence and his punitive justice belong hand in glove to the same central idea that governs the whole treatise (and Legat. as well). As has already been stressed, the concepts of divine providence and justice are no sheer theoretical issues in Flacc., they play such a prominent role precisely because of the practical problems of the Alexandrian Jews: it is the horrible persecution that has undermined their faith in God’s providence and justice. Philo has set himself the task of restoring this faith. (b) Loyalty to Rome and the Baseness of the Egyptians Less important than the motifs of providence and justice but still important enough to be singled out in this short section are the themes of Jewish loyalty to Rome and the base character of the Egyptians. These two themes, too, hang closely together. As Maren Niehoff has demonstrated at length in her valuable recent monograph (2001), Philo marshals all his eloquence in his attempts to prove that the Jews are more congenial to the Romans than others, especially more than the unruly Egyptians, and they share with the Romans their scorn for the Egyptians. Egyptian violence against the Jews is an inevitable consequence of their character, which is always inclined to stasis and given to jealousy and what Philo calls “an old and innate hatred” (Flacc. 29). For that reason a strong Roman government is needed to keep the Egyptians in check and limit the baneful effects of their inherent weaknesses. The Jews, on the other hand, are the ideal subjects of the Roman Empire. Their loyalty to the emperors is unrivalled. Philo stresses that “their synagogues clearly form the basis for their piety towards the imperial family” (Flacc. 49), and that “they were the only people under the sun who by being deprived of their synagogues would at the same time be deprived of their means of showing their piety towards their benefactors [the emperors], which is something they would have regarded as worth dying for many thousands of deaths” (Flacc. 48). The attitude of the Egyptians is the opposite of that of the Jews. For that reason, for

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Philo the boundary between humanity and subhumans is identical to the boundary between Jews and Egyptians. The xenophobic overtones in his statements find their closest parallels in Roman literature of Philo’s time (especially in the Augustan propaganda). By having the Jews emerge as a nation sharing Rome’s ‘barbarian Other,’ Philo integrates the Jews into the contemporary Roman discourse, and in this way he suggests “a profound Roman-Jewish congeniality.”29 It is for that reason that throughout this treatise Philo tries to create as close a connection as possible between the opponents of the Jews and the Egyptians. There is no doubt that Philo regarded the Jew-haters and their leaders as essentially Egyptians, even if they were Greeks or of mixed Graeco-Egyptian descent. Of course, the opponents of the Jews considered themselves to be Greeks: hence both Apion (GLAJJ no. 164 §8) and the Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs (4C25) suggest that the Jews were in fact the opposite of Greeks: they were Egyptians! As Goudriaan puts it (although somewhat overstating his case), “Philo on the one hand and the Jew-haters on the other mapped the ethnic composition of the society they were obliged to share in different and even incompatible ways. Both parties tried to associate themselves as much as possible with the Hellenic ethnic entity and claimed to be real Alexandrians, with the exclusion of the other; both parties kept the Egyptians at the largest possible distance and tried to push down the adversaries to that level. (...) Both sides rivalled with each other in their contempt for the Egyptians.”30 Apparently, the only thing that counted in this cultural and political struggle was the way ethnic labels were applied. So in a sense one might say that ethnic labelling is another major element in Flacc. 5. The historical background (with an excursus on Flaccus) One of the greatest problems to be dealt with is that Philo does spell out in detail what happened in the clash between the Jews and the non-Jews (mainly Greeks but very probably also Egyptians) of Alexandria but does not spend even one word on the burning question of why all this happened. Why did the non-Jews of that city hate the Jews so much? In one paragraph Philo mentions in passing that the Alexandrians had “an ancient and in a sense innate enmity towards the Jews” (§29), but he fails to explain the source of this enmity. In 29 30

Niehoff 2001:60. Goudriaan 1992:88.

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his next written work, on the embassy to Caligula, Philo does explain why the emperor treated the Jewish delegation so badly: Among all the nations in the Roman Empire it was only the Jews who refused to acknowledge the divinity of Caligula. That they did not want to regard him as a god made him furious. But in In Flaccum we are denied every sort of explanation. And here comparisons with later pogroms are misleading rather than helpful. In the pogroms of the 17th-20th century the driving forces behind the persecutions were always the anti-Jewish preaching by the Christian church or theories on the racial inferiority of the Jews, or a mixture of both. These factors played no role at all, however, in first century Alexandria for the simple reason that neither Christianity nor racist theories were in existence there at that time. So even though the similarity between what happened in first century Alexandria and in 17th-20th century Europe is striking, the background must be completely different. But what is that background? It is a priori implausible that there was only one cause or one reason for this outburst of anti-Jewish violence. It stands to reason that it must have been more complex. Since outbursts of such a scale took place nowhere else in the ancient world of the first half of the first century, it must probably have to do with something specifically Alexandrian. It is to this problem that we will now devote extra attention. I will first deal briefly with the possible political factors and thereafter with elements that are related to Jewish religious beliefs and non-Jewish reactions to them. To begin with the political factors, it should be borne in mind that the Jewish presence in Egypt in the first century was not something new. In spite of the biblical stories about the liberation of the Israelites from the oppressive Egyptians in the time of Moses (the 13th cent. BCE), Jews had already settled again in Egypt in biblical times. In the book of Jeremiah (ch. 43) we read that many Israelites took refuge in Egypt in the face of the Babylonian armies that overran Judea and Jerusalem at the beginning of the sixth century BCE. And the find of a rich trove of Aramaic letters from Elephantine, an island in the Nile near Aswan, proves that a Jewish military settlement existed there from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE as a kind of border police in the service of the Persians.31 It is interesting to see that after a period of peaceful co-existence these Jewish soldiers and 31

For details see Porten 1992, 1996.

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their families came into a serious conflict with their Egyptian neighbours in the final decades of the fifth century. The Jews had their own temple at Elephantine, and so did the Egyptians who had a shrine for Khnum, the ram-god who was creator and also the ‘Lord of the Nile.’ In the eyes of the priests of Khnum, the Jews who sacrificed rams (Khnum’s sacred animal) on the altar of their temple committed deicide (killing their god). Finally, in 410 BCE, a band of Egyptians vented their anger on the Jews by destroying the sanctuary of Yahweh at Elephantine, which was followed by the pillage of Jewish houses. Less than a century later, Alexander the Great founded the great city in northern Egypt which he named Alexandria after himself.32 The Jews were there almost from the beginning as one of the groups of non-Egyptians who had been brought there by the Greek overlords, the Ptolemies.33 This was the beginning of a long history, which was by and large peaceful for almost three centuries.34 The Jewish community grew and flourished there. After one generation they had already become so acculturated that the Hebrew Bible had to be translated into Greek (the Septuagint); and thereafter an impressive Jewish literature in Greek came into being on a scale that one could see nowhere else.35 Alexandria was the place par excellence of the Judaeo-Greek cultural synthesis. Around the turn of the era probably some 100,000 Jews lived in the city, many of whom were highly educated. “Integration in the social, economic, and cultural life of Alexandria was open to them, and they took advantage of that opening. Jews served in the armies, obtained administrative posts, took part in commerce, shipping, finance, farming, and every form of occupation, reached posts of prestige and importance, and played a role in the world of the Hellenic intelligentsia.”36 This peaceful situation began to change, however, when the Romans took power over Egypt. 37 Pompey’s envoy Gabinius was 32

See Fraser 1972: I.3-7. According to Josephus even by Alexander himself: C. Ap. 2.35; but see Pucci Ben Zeev 1998:299. 34 There are only a very few indications that there might have been violent clashes between Jews and non-Jews before 38 CE. CPJ 141 (first half of the first cent. BCE) may be a case in point, but it is ambiguous. For a survey of other evidence (none of it conclusive) see Ameling ms. 2003:25-29. 35 Schürer 1973/87: III.470-704; Collins 2000; see also the helpful chart in Sterling 2001:288-290. 36 Gruen 2002:69. 37 Tcherikover 1963. 33

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helped by the Jews on his march into Egypt in 57 BCE after having been advised to do so by Antipater, Herod the Great’s father.38 When later, in 48/47 BCE, Julius Caesar intervened in Alexandria on behalf of Cleopatra, he received military aid from the Jews who lived there.39 In 30 BCE Egypt came under Roman rule and it became a province of the Roman empire, subject to Roman officials, taxation, and law. Shortly afterwards it was grouped with the so-called ‘imperial’ provinces whose governors were appointed by the emperor.40 The first Roman emperor, Augustus, confirmed all existing Jewish privileges which he had engraved on a marble slab and set up in the city. He thanked the Alexandrian Jews for their services against Cleopatra.41 The Roman confirmation of the privileges of religious freedom and ethnic identity thus won by the Jews from the latter two rulers probably embittered their relations with the other peoples of Alexandria, their Greek and Egyptian neighbours, who were notoriously anti-Roman and felt betrayed by the Jews. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Jews had furthered the decline of their city from a royal residence and head of a sovereign state to a mere provincial capital. Alexandria’s glory was gone, and the Greeks felt humiliated by the Jews, a sentiment that was probably shared by the Egyptians of the city. After that, attacking the Jews became an indirect, and therefore relatively safe, way to attack the authority of Rome. Augustus, who otherwise favored the Jews, also introduced a muchhated poll tax (called laographia) from which only Greek Alexandrians with full citizenship were exempted.42 So the vast majority of the Jews had to pay this burdensome tax as well. Since the payment of this tax implied not only a heavy financial burden, causing impoverishment of the population, but also personal human degradation, it made the question of citizenship acute and that created much tension between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of this privilege. Among the evidence for this tension is one of the papyri with fragments of the so-called Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs, where the protagonist of the anti-Jewish cause, the gymnasiarch Isidorus, says to the emperor 38

Details in Fuchs 1924:17. Josephus, Ant. 14.127-136; Bell. 1.187-192; C.Ap. 2.61; Barraclough 1984:423 note 27; Huzar 1988:635-6. 40 See Bowman & Rathbone 1992 and Montevecchi 1988. 41 Josephus, Ant. 14.188; C.Ap. 2.60. Josephus, however, mistakenly ascribes this declaration to Julius Caesar; see Tcherikover 1963:3 note 1. Maybe the detail about the engraving of the marble slab should be taken cum grano salis. 42 For details see CPJ 1.60, with lit. in note 26. 39

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Claudius: “They [the Jews] are not of the same nature as the Alexandrians [=Greeks], but are rather like Egyptians. Are they not on a level with those who pay the poll-tax?” (CPJ 156c25-27). Jewish evidence may perhaps be found in 3 Macc. 2:28-30.43 The various Jewish sources which deal with or mention this subject, especially Josephus, seem to be unanimous in asserting Jewish citizenship in Alexandria from the very beginning, but non-Jewish sources give a rather different impression. Since the acquisition of citizenship became a burning question at the beginning of the Roman period and created enmity between Jews and Greeks, it is not surprising that the sources “do not excel in neutrality and tend to exaggerate — sometimes even to falsify — the state of affairs in regard to it.”44 The legal status of the Alexandrian Jews is a very complicated issue that has been hotly debated not only in antiquity but also in modern scholarly literature, and much still remains very uncertain. I will summarize only some important data here, and that as briefly as possible because not all details are necessary for a better understanding of Philo’s book.45 The Jews enjoyed a certain degree of self-government in Alexandria probably right from the beginning, although their political rights were distinct from the citizenship of Alexandrian Greeks. Their internal autonomy “was not political but religious and social only.”46 It included a kind of governing body (in Roman times this was a council of elders or gerousia), the right to build synagogues and to educate the youth in the traditions of the Jewish people, and the establishment of their own law courts. In this way the Greek and Roman overlords enabled the Jews to live in accordance with their own ancestral customs (pavtria e[qh). The first-century BCE geographer Strabo informs us that in his time the head of the Jewish community in Alexandria, the ethnarch, “ruled the people, judged its cases, and supervised the implementation of contracts and orders, like the ruler of an independent state” (quoted in Josephus, Ant. 14.117). So, the Jews were privileged residents, not just foreigners with temporary domicile, and set well above the ordinary Egyptians, 43

But see Anderson 1985:511 and Gruen 2002:76-77. Tcherikover 1959:309. 45 For a survey and bibliography see Tcherikover 1959:309-332; Kasher 1985 passim; Mélèze-Modrzejewski 1995:161-183; Barclay 1996:60-71; Schäfer 1997:136160; Honigman 1997; Sly 2000:249-265; Gruen 2002:73-83; for detailed documentation the reader is referred to these works. 46 Tcherikover 1959:301. 44

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although still below the fully enfranchised Greeks (their civic rights did not entail citizenship). It was these privileges that Flaccus suddenly dissolved in 38 CE. It would seem that he had been instigated to do so by the Greek nationalists who were of the opinion that Jews did not deserve a higher status than the Egyptians. One of the reasons for this instigation may have been that “at the peak of the Jewish social pyramid were a minority of families (...) who had attained citizen status”47 and therefore equal rights with the Greeks. No doubt Philo’s own family was one of these, for his brother, Alexander, was one of the highest officials in the government of the city and his nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander, even became Roman governor of Egypt. The status of full citizen was usually acquired by inheritance but this privilege could also be granted to select individuals by kings, emperors, or the citizen body. Since we know of several Jews with leading positions in the administration of the city or the country, it is certain that some individual Jews did acquire the status of an Alexandrian citizen.48 The Greeks, however, felt that in their city only they and not the Jews were entitled to this desired status. And there is reason to believe that the Greek delegation that went to Caligula after the events of 38 “challenged the privileges of Alexandrian Jewish citizens, in line with the long-standing uneasiness in Alexandria about the ‘infiltration’ of unworthy individuals into the citizen body.”49 In a telling papyrus from about 20 BCE an Alexandrian official expresses the wish of his Greek fellow citizens “to take care that the pure citizen body of Alexandria is not corrupted by men who are uncultured and uneducated” (CPJ 150.5-6), i.e. by non-Greeks. Jews are not mentioned explicitly here, but there can be little doubt that they were in the mind of the writer. The document makes clear that non-Greeks tried to be enrolled as citizens because this was the only way to avoid the heavy poll-tax that the Romans levied. As we almost never hear of Egyptians trying to do this, it is most probably the Jews that the Greeks tried to keep outside their prestigious body politic.50 The leader of the Greek-Alexandrian delegation complains to Caligula, “Why is it that, if they are citizens, they do not worship the same gods as the Alexandrians?” (Josephus, C.Ap. 2.65). This makes 47

Barclay 1996:67. See Tcherikover 1959:515-516 note 90. Bowman & Rathbone 1992:114 argue that there may have been a sort of numerus clausus of citizens. 49 Barclay 1996:69. 50 Pace Gruen 2002:75-76. 48

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clear that (1) there were Jews with full citizenship in Alexandria, (2) these had not abandoned their traditional Jewish faith, and (3) for that very reason they were hated by the Greeks, because citizenship normally involved participation in religious activities, in civic cults, and this was forbidden to the Jews as being idolatrous. “Whatever exemptions or compromises were worked out here were clearly resented by Alexandrians who denied that one could uphold Judaean ethnic customs while also enjoying the status of Alexandrian citizenship.”51 So the crisis of 38 “concerned both the immediate and general loss of their [the Jews’] communal privileges in Alexandria and the long-standing dispute about Jews entering the citizen class.”52 In the year 41 Caligula’s successor, the emperor Claudius, writes a long letter to the Alexandrians (CPJ 153) in order to settle the matter. He urges the Alexandrians to show more tolerance towards the Jews, and he upholds the social and ancestral rights of the Jewish community. His language is firm: “Unless you stop this destructive and obstinate mutual enmity, I shall be forced to show what a benevolent ruler can be when he is turned to righteous indignation” (7981). But at the same time he states that Jews cannot claim citizenship in Alexandria, “a city which is not their own” (95). So, the right to live in accordance with Jewish ancestral customs and probably also their limited autonomy were restored to them, but “the door to citizenship was slammed firmly in the faces of the few who had achieved, or aspired to, this status.”53 Or, to put it in the words of Tcherikover, “From the events of the years 38-41 Alexandrian Jewry emerged victorious in the sphere of national-religious autonomy, but as regards civic rights the year 41 marked a definite defeat in the struggle for emancipation.”54 Why were the Greeks so adamantly opposed to ‘contamination’ of their body politic by the Jews? From where did this hatred come in Alexandria where anti-Jewish slander, as Philo says, was nurtured and taught to everyone right from the cradle (Legat. 170)? It is this aspect to which we now turn. Although it is undeniable that in Greek and Roman sources from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE we encounter a remarkable 51 52 53 54

Barclay 1996:70. Ibid. Barclay 1996:71. Tcherikover 1963:20.

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degree of sympathy for Judaism on the part of several pagan writers, it is also undeniable that in the same period other pagan writers demonstrate a strong animosity towards the Jews. For lack of a better term I will call it Jew-hatred.55 Let me begin by giving a striking example of this phenomenon. Some 70 years after the pogrom, in the first decade of the 2nd century CE, the famous Roman historian Tacitus, who has the reputation of being well-informed, writes the following about the Jewish people (Hist. 5.3-5 = GLAJJ no. 281): Most writers agree that once a disease, which horribly disfigured the body, broke out over Egypt. King Bocchoris, seeking a remedy, consulted the oracle of Hammon, and was bidden to cleanse his realm, and to convey into some foreign land this people [the Jews] that was detested by the gods. The people, who had been collected after diligent search, found themselves left in a desert and sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moses by name, warned them not to look for any relief from God or man, forsaken as they were of both, but to trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader that man who should first help them to be relieved of their present misery. They agreed, and in utter ignorance began to advance at random. Nothing, however, distressed them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moses followed them, and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring of water. This furnished relief. After a continuous journey for six days, on the seventh they possessed themselves of a country, from which they expelled the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple. Moses, wishing to secure for the future his authority over the nation, gave them a novel form of worship, opposed to all that is practised by other men. Things sacred with us have no sanctity with them, while they allow what is forbidden with us. In their holy place they have consecrated an image of the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance from their long and thirsty wanderings. They slay the ram, seemingly in derision of Hammon, and they sacrifice the ox, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They abstain from swine’s flesh, in consideration of what they suffered when they were infected by the leprosy to which this animal is liable. (...) We are told that the rest of the seventh day was adopted, because this day brought with it a termination of their toils; after a while the charm of indolence beguiled them into giving up the seventh year also to inaction. (...) All their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, 55 For the anachronistic nature of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ see, e.g., Yavetz 1997:19-21; others would prefer ‘Judaeophobia’ (Schäfer 1997), but that is not yet a current term.

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introduction owe their strength to their very badness. The most degraded out of other nations, scorning their national beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to show compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful. Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men. Those who come over to their religion adopt that practice, and have this lesson first instilled into them: to despise all gods, to disown their country, and set at naught parents, children, and brethren.56

What we see in this spiteful caricature is a culmination of 400 years of anti-Jewish propaganda, which we find in many written sources from the preceding centuries. What is so striking about this literature is that not only are the first instances known to us of Alexandrian provenance, but that also many of the other instances derive from this city.57 Let us pass some of them briefly in review. The first Egyptian intellectual to write in Greek was the Alexandrian priest Manetho, who lived in the early 3rd century BCE. In his great work on Egyptian history (GLAJJ nos. 19-21),58 he tells about pharaoh Amenophis’ wish to see the gods — a wish, so he was told, that could be fulfilled only if he purified the whole land of lepers and other polluted persons. He collected some 80.000 of such people and sent them to the quarries. Then the polluted people joined forces with the lepers, convened in the city of Avaris, and revolted under the leadership of a priest called Osarsiph whom at the end Manetho says to be identical with Moses. This priest made it a law that they should neither worship the gods nor refrain from killing any of the animals regarded as sacred in Egypt but that they should sacrifice and consume all alike, and that they should have contact with nobody except those of their own confederacy. He decreed a great number of laws that were fully opposed to Egyptian custom and then asked the inhabitants of Jerusalem, old enemies of the Egyptians, to join them in an attack on Egypt. Not only did they set villages and towns on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods 56

On this passage see now esp. Bloch 2002. See Aziza 1987; on the Egyptian origin of anti-Jewish attitudes see MélèzeModrzejewski 1981 and Schäfer 1997. 58 Actually there are two versions of the exodus in Manetho, but for our purposes that is irrelevant; see Stern ad locum in GLAJJ. 57

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without restraint, but they also used the sanctuaries as kitchens to roast the sacred animals that the Egyptians worshipped. They even compelled the Egyptian religious officials to sacrifice their own sacred animals and afterwards cast them naked out of the temple. So this brutal regime was characterized by misanthrôpia and by hatred of the indigenous Egyptian religion. But fortunately, after some time, this regime of terror was expelled and the criminals settled in Syria (Palestine). Such, says this Alexandrian priest, were the origins of the Jewish people. Although there can be no doubt that older Egyptian stories dealing originally with the reigns of terror by Semitic peoples like the Hyksos have been applied here by Manetho only secondarily to the Jews,59 it is clear that what we have here is an anti-Jewish version of the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt. Here is no story of liberation from Egyptian oppression by God; on the contrary, it was the gods who commanded that these not only polluted but also oppressive persons of extreme impiety be expelled from their territory. This is a motif that will recur from this time on in all sorts of variations, as we have already seen in Tacitus. It was probably in the 2nd, or perhaps in the 1st century BCE, that the Graeco-Egyptian author Lysimachus wrote his work, Aegyptiaka. The work is now lost but Josephus quotes him as saying (GLAJJ no. 158) that pharaoh Bokchoris ordered that Egypt be purged of lepers as well as of impure and impious people; the former should be killed by drowning, the latter should be driven into the desert. These gathered around a certain Moses who instructed them to show goodwill to nobody, to offer not the best but always the worst advice, and to overthrow any temples and altars of the gods which they found. Thereupon these impure and impious people maltreated the population of Egypt and plundered and set fire to the temples wherever they came until they reached the country now called Judaea, where they settled and built Jerusalem. Different than Manetho, “Lysimachus is unambiguous as to who the impure people are. We learn that they are Jews not only at the end of the story when they reach Judea; rather, we are told from the very outset that the Jewish people were afflicted with leprosy, scurvy, and other maladies.” 60 Lysimachus remodels the motifs of impiety and misanthropy in a very negative 59 60

Schäfer 1997:163-167. Schäfer 1997:28.

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way: the Jews deliberately destroy all the temples of other peoples and they are hostile to all humankind, intentionally offering everyone the worst advice. Another version, probably Alexandrian as well, of the story of the Egyptian origin of the Jews is also related by the historian Diodorus of Sicily in the first century BCE. He tells us (GLAJJ no. 63) that when in 135 BCE king Antiochus VII tried to capture Jerusalem, his advisers said to him that he should take the city by storm and wipe out the nation of the Jews completely, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people. They also pointed out that the ancestors of the Jews had been driven out of Egypt as people who were impious and detested by the gods. For by way of purging the country, all persons who had white and leprous marks on their bodies had been assembled and driven across the border as being under a curse. The refugees had occupied the territory around Jerusalem and had organized the nation of the Jews. They had made hatred of humankind into a tradition and on this account had introduced utterly outlandish laws: neither to break bread with any other people nor to show them any goodwill at all. The most striking feature in this account is that the Jews had adopted hatred of humankind and atheism as a permanent tradition. Impiety and misanthropy have now become stock elements in anti-Jewish propaganda of Alexandria. We see that again in the first century CE when Apion, a philologist of Egyptian origin,61 publishes his work on the history of Egypt. His attacks on the Jewish people are so vehement and influential that several decades after his death the Jewish historian Josephus still finds it necessary to devote a whole work to the refutation of the slanders of this arch-Jew-hater, his Contra Apionem. Apart from the elements that have become familiar by now he adds the following new detail that the Jews after leaving Egypt marched for six days and then “developed tumours in the groin, and that was why, after safely reaching the country now called Judaea, they rested on the seventh day, and called that day sabbaton, preserving the Egyptian terminology; for disease of the groin is called sabbatosis in Egyptian” (GLAJJ no. 165). But this etymological speculation, which was a specialty of Apion, is innocent as compared to what he adds later, namely that the Seleucid king Antiochus IV entered the Jerusalem temple and

61

See van der Horst 2002:207-221.

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he found there a couch on which a man was reclining, with a table before him laden with a banquet of fish of the sea, beasts of the earth, and birds of the air, at which the poor man was gazing in stupefaction. The king’s entry was instantly hailed by him with adoration, as about to procure him profound relief. Falling at the king’s knees, he stretched out his right hand and implored him to set him free. The king reassured him and asked him to tell him who he was, why he was living there, what was the meaning of his abundant fare. Thereupon, with sighs and tears, the man told in a pitiful tone the tale of his distress. He said that he was a Greek and that while travelling around in this province in order to make his living, he was suddenly kidnapped by foreigners and brought to this temple, and shut up there. He was seen by nobody, but was fattened on feasts of the most lavish description. At first such unexpected advantages seemed to him a pleasure, but after a while they made him suspicious, and finally astonished. At last he inquired of the servants that came to him and was informed by them that it was in order to fulfill a law of the Jews, which they were forbidden to tell him, that he was being fattened. They did the same at a fixed time every year: they used to catch a Greek foreigner, fatten him up for a year, and then lead him to a certain wood, kill him, sacrifice his body with their customary ritual, and partake of his flesh. While immolating the Greek, they swore an oath of hostility to the Greeks (GLAJJ no. 171).

We should keep in mind that it was this man, Apion, who during the reign of Caligula was not only honored by the city of Alexandria with a grant of citizenship — Josephus tells that Apion congratulated the city on that occasion for having so great a man as he as a citizen (C. Ap. 2.135) — but that the city also asked him to act as leader of the Alexandrian delegation to Rome in the conflict between Greeks and Jews that divided the city in 38 CE.62 If this man was so prestigious that the Greeks of Alexandria decided to confer full citizenship upon him, it should surprise no one that his incredible accusation of Jewish cannibalism (eating a Greek at that!) was taken seriously and believed by these Greeks. One can imagine that his ideas were eagerly exploited and divulged by hatemongers such as Isidorus and Lampo in their Alexandrian clubs and in the gymnasia of the city. They will certainly have sown a lot of hatred there. Apion’s ridiculing remark about the sabbath (which he derived from an Egyptian word for groin disease) brings us to the following element: the accusations of Jewish laziness. Here again we encounter 62 Significantly enough, another notorious Alexandrian Jew-hater, the priest Chaeremon (first cent. CE), who wrote an anti-Jewish work in the same period as Apion, probably also was a member of the Greek delegation to Gaius (see Van der Horst 1984:47).

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a malevolent interpretation of a Jewish custom. The sabbath is interpreted as a sign of Jewish idleness and indolence by several ancient authors. To mention only one instance, the famous Roman philosopher Seneca, a contemporary of Philo, says that the Jewish observance of the sabbath is very inexpedient since by introducing one day of rest in every seven they lose in idleness a seventh of their life (GLAJJ no. 186). This is echoed by Tacitus, as we have seen, when he remarks that the pleasures of indolence on the sabbath induced the Jews to giving up the seventh year as well to inaction, a clear reference to the so-called sabbatical year (Hist. 5.4). His contemporary, the Greek philosopher Plutarch, lists keeping of the sabbath among the stupid forms of barbarian superstition that have been adopted even by some Greeks (GLAJJ no. 255). Passages such as Spec. 2.60 and Hyp. 7.14 show that Philo was acquainted with this kind of ridicule. Circumcision is a Jewish custom that forms an easy target for ridicule. To the Jews it was the most important external sign of the covenant between God and Israel, but to the Greeks and Romans it was just discreditable mutilation. They regarded a circumcised penis as obscene and ugly, and as a sign of lewdness. Although several ancient authors still show some awareness of the fact that circumcision is of Egyptian origin, many others regard it as a typically Jewish custom, and their perception of it “varies from neutrality to irony to derision and outspoken hostility.”63 We have already seen how Tacitus makes a connection between circumcision and Jewish separatism, which he interprets as misanthropy. They chose it deliberately, he says, to distinguish themselves from other people and to express their hate and enmity against others (Hist. 5.5.1). Other authors speak about circumcision with all kinds of sexual innuendo, the implication often being that Jewish men are well-endowed and sexually extremely active and very potent. The association of circumcision with lechery is not uncommon, but I will refrain from quoting texts here64 (that Philo was familiar with this kind of ridicule is apparent from Spec. 1.12 and Q G 3.47-48). Another target of pagan criticism is the Jewish abstinence from pork, one of the most prominent dietary laws in the Bible. But since it is ridiculed mainly by Roman satirical authors, not by Greeks, I will not deal with it in the present context. Let me finally add some remarks on what Graeco-Roman authors say about the Jewish belief in one god. What struck them more than 63 64

Schäfer 1997:96. See Schäfer 1997:99-102.

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anything else is that the Jewish God is an iconic, which is contrary to all the customs of the Greeks and Romans. And since this deity without image is invisible, the conclusion that is often drawn is that the Jews do not recognize any god at all and are atheists. Since the Jews differ from all other peoples in this respect, it is said that this contributes to their xenophobic life-style. More than one ancient author, therefore, condemns the Jews as both atheists and misanthropes. “In the eyes of the Greeks there could hardly be a verdict more devastating than this one.”65 Others comment upon the arrogance that goes hand in hand with the exclusiveness of Jewish monotheism (e.g., Celsus in Origen, C C 5.2.41 = GLAJJ no. 375). The separatism that this entails is clearly worded by the third century CE historian Cassius Dio, when he says that the Jews are distinguished from the rest of humanity in practically every detail of life, but especially by the fact that they do not honor any of the usual gods, but show extreme reverence for only one particular divinity (Hist. Rom. 37.17.1 = GLAJJ no. 406). Others, however, assert that the Jews worship an ass, a motif that had its origin in Alexandria, where stories about a statue of a pack-ass in the Jerusalem temple circulated (see Mnaseas in GLAJJ no. 28). Here one should bear in mind that this animal was associated with the malicious Egyptian deity Seth (in Greek Typhon), an evil power who embodies the foreign rulers who have to be expelled from Egypt. In certain Egyptian circles one tried “to connect the origin of the Jews with Seth-Typhon, feared and despised in both Greek and Egyptian mythology.”66 It is no coincidence that Manetho, the earliest Alexandrian anti-Jewish author we know of, writes that the expelled unclean and leprous persons joined forces in the city of Avaris, and adds that “according to religious tradition this city was from earliest times dedicated to Typhon” (C. Ap. 1.237 = GLAJJ no. 21). And his later fellow countryman, Apion, states that in the innermost sanctuary of the Jerusalem temple the Jews kept an ass’s head which they worshipped with the greatest reverence, thus characterizing them as followers of this power of evil (C.Ap. 2.80 = GLAJJ no. 170). How dangerous such a crude antiJewish statement could be can be gauged from the fact that Josephus found it necessary to write a lengthy refutation (C.Ap. 2.81-88).

65 66

Schäfer 1997:36. Schäfer 1997:57.

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Now it must immediately be added, that I have shown here only one side of the coin. It would have been equally possible to present a completely opposite picture. We have an abundance of material in which Graeco-Roman authors (but not from Alexandria!) express a widely very different view of the Jews. Moses is depicted by these authors as a wise lawgiver and his followers as a people of philosophers, who have one of the most exalted forms of spiritual worship.67 Some authors say the Jews set an example that should be followed by other nations. And from other sources we know that Judaism exerted a great fascination on many gentiles in the ancient world.68 We do not know of many proselytes, but we do hear of large numbers of gentiles who sympathized with Judaism and gathered on the fringes of many a synagogue in the Jewish Diaspora.69 They came to the services on shabbat, studied the Torah, and kept some of the biblical commandments, although they did not usually become members of the community. These sympathizers, often dubbed ‘godfearers’ in the ancient sources, sometimes made substantial contributions to the Jewish communities, for instance by financing buildings such as synagogues. So, the negative picture sketched above is not the whole picture. But for our present purpose it is important to notice that the dark side was there and that it had from the very beginning a strongly Alexandrian stamp. What happened in Alexandria in the, roughly, three centuries preceding the pogrom was a complex process. It would be unwise to speak in the simplifying terms of a monocausal model. Brief though my sketch has been, I hope that, at least, I have highlighted clearly some aspects that can contribute to a better understanding of the events of 38 CE. First, there was the long-standing tradition of Alexandrian Jew-hatred. We do not know whether the Graeco-Alexandrians were incited to produce their anti-Jewish versions of the exodus story because they read the first Greek translation of the Jewish Bible and reacted to the anti-Egyptian version of the story it contained, or rather reacted to hearsay. 70 Whatever the case, the 67

112.

68

Tcherikover 1959:359-360; Mélèze-Modrzejewski 1981:419; Gager 1983:35-

See Feldman 1993:177-297 for a plethora of evidence. See Wander 1998. In this connection it is interesting to see that Philo himself claims that each year Jews and non-Jews alike gathered on the peninsula of Pharos to celebrate the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (Mos. 2.41). 70 See Tcherikover 1959:363. 69

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bitter antagonism that these anti-Jewish versions bespeak from the very beginning lingers on from the start of the Hellenistic period till far into the Roman period (even a quick glance at GLAJJ makes that abundantly clear). On top of that come the many stories of Jewish separatism, hatred of Egyptian civilization, inevitably widened to hatred of humanity in general, until it reached its bizarre final stage with the accusation of an annual cannibalistic ritual in which a Greek was sacrificed and eaten in Jerusalem (of course with the implication that it is the Jewish God who demands the sacrifice of foreigners). This unabated anti-Jewish propaganda cannot have failed to have a dramatic effect.71 As we ourselves can witness even today, in the continual and unabashed stream of anti-Jewish propaganda — however full of obvious lies and horrible slander it may be (including the notorious nonsense from the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion) — hatred is very easily sown. But it needs a trigger to set it off. And triggers were not lacking in Alexandria. The explosive mixture of verbal Jew-hatred and political reality came into being with the Roman conquest of the Near East in the first century BCE. The first factor was that the Alexandrian Jews sided with the Romans, sensing that they would gain privileges by that, which was true, but the price was high. The semi-autonomous status they received in Alexandria from the Romans gave rise to an enormous resentment among the Greeks and Egyptians, who felt that their city had lost its status whereas the Jewish community had won prestige. This exacerbated the antagonism. The second trigger, which actually put the spark to the tinder, was the visit of the Jewish puppetking Agrippa to Alexandria with a flashing show of his bodyguards. This was too much for the frustrated Greeks and Egyptians. In their midst was a people whom they regarded as foreigners, yes even as barbarians; these were people who had no regard for the traditional gods of the civilized world whatsoever, for they practised a arrogant exclusivist religion. These unbearable separatists were not only full of hatred of humankind in general; what was even worse was that every year they fattened up a human person, a Greek at that, to be slaughtered in a cruel cannibalistic ritual. When this scum of the world had the affront to hail a king of their own, while the others had not even

71 Bludau 1906:79 ominously speaks in this connection of “eine natürliche Reaktion des hellenistischen Volksgefühls gegen ein fremdes Element, das in seinem Leben einen allzu breiten Raum eingenommen hatte” (!).

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a modicum of self-rule,72 this was the bloody limit. Their fury could no longer be contained; and when they realized that the Roman governor, who was supposed to keep them in check, was himself in deep trouble because of the ascension of Caligula, they grabbed their chance. They could now vent their anger by attacking the Jews because they could blackmail their governor, Flaccus, into connivance. 73 Excursus: Aulus Avillius Flaccus We do not know much about Flaccus with certainty. Philo’s Flacc. and Legat., our main sources, are heavily biased, and there is little else that is informative. Flaccus was born in Rome, probably around 15 BCE (so he was approximately of the same age as Philo), since in Flacc. 158 Philo has him say: “I was the schoolmate and companion of the grandchildren of Augustus” (sumfoithth;" de; kai; sumbiwth;" genovmeno" tw'n qugatridw'n tou' Sebastou'), by which he means the children of Augustus’ daughter(s), i.c. of Julia from her marriage with M. Vipsanius Agrippa: C. Caesar (20 BCE-4CE), L. Caesar (17 BCE-2CE), and Agrippa Postumus (12 BCE-14CE). If this information is correct, Flaccus grew up and was educated together with three members of the imperial family who were born in the second decade before the Common Era, i.e., approximately 15 BCE. It also implies that he came from a high-ranking family that had close ties with the court. This is confirmed by the information Philo gives in Flacc. 2 to the effect that “he was reckoned among the friends of the emperor Tiberius,” which is a somewhat formal title for an informal circle of courtiers who were the emperor’s main advisors. His close friendship with Macro (mentioned in Flacc. 11), who had the most predominant 72 On the abolition of the Alexandrian Senate (boulê) and the Greeks’ requests for permission to restore one see Bowman & Rathbone 1992:118-119. 73 Although Philo speaks only about the persecution of the Jews of Alexandria, not of the Samaritans in the city, it cannot be excluded that Samaritans belonged to the victims of the pogrom as well. Two things have to be borne in mind here: firstly, it is certain that there had been a sizeable Samaritan community in Alexandria from the third century BCE onwards; and, secondly, outsiders very often could not make any distinction between Jews and Samaritans, even though the two parties were opposed to each other. So even although Philo’s emphasis on Jerusalem as the “mother city” of the persecuted Jews rules out that he envisaged Samaritans as victims, in practice this group may well have undergone the same violence as the Jews. See for Samaritans in Alexandria van der Horst 1990:138-147; and for the indistinguishability of Jews and Samaritans van der Horst 2002:257-258.

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position in politics after the emperor, namely that of commander of Tiberius’ praetorian guard (praefectus praetorio), fits in with this picture, as does his friendship with Aemilius Lepidus, the husband of Gaius’ sister Drusilla (see Flacc. 151). We know next to nothing about Flaccus’ career before the year 32, when he was appointed governor of Egypt by Tiberius. He must have been in his middle forties by that time. It is in this period, but probably already before 32 as well, that he seems to have played an active role in the prosecution of Agrippina: “He had belonged to those who conspired against Gaius’ mother,” says Philo (§9). The process ended with her banishment by Tiberius in 29 CE (she died in 33 CE), and it was probably one of the reasons why Flaccus became nervous when Gaius acceeded to the throne in 37 CE, although we do not know any details of his role in this affair. Also in this period, but later than the process against Agrippina, he tried to promote Gemellus, Tiberius’ grandson, as the most suitable successor to his grandfather, instead of the son of Tiberius’ nephew, Gaius; as Philo says, “he had sided with the party of the real rather than the adopted children” (§9). So he had bet on the wrong horse, which was another reason for some anxiety in 37.74 From the six years he was praefectus Aegypti (32-38 CE), two inscriptions have been preserved in which he is mentioned, as well as two papyri, all of them of Egyptian provenance. In the inscriptions, OGIS 661 (=CIG 4716, IGRR I.1164, SB V.8329) and OGIS 669 (=CIG 4957, IGRR I.1263, SB V.8444), hardly more than his name is mentioned. The first one is a dedicatory inscription from a temple for Aphrodite in Dendera dating to the middle of the thirties of the first century CE, in which the dedication is said to have been done ejpi; Au[lou Aujillivou Flavkkou hJgemovno". The second one is a very long edict by Tiberius Julius Alexander from 68 CE, found in the oasis of Khargeh, in which this prefect of Egypt reminds the readers of the fact that one 74 Sherwin-White 1972 finds this “a strange story” (820), and he adds, “it is difficult to see what part Flaccus can have played in advocating the claims of Gemellus during the last five years of Tiberius’ principate. The whole notion is rendered improbable by his connection with Macro, who was then busy protecting the interests of Gaius against those of Gemellus” (821). It is, however, even more difficult to see why Philo would have made up this whole point when it could easily be falsified and other, more feasible explanations were available. Sherwin-White’s own speculative explanation is “that Flaccus, after five years tenure of the prefecture, one of the longest in the history of the office, expected to be replaced in due course, and prepared to conciliate the most dangerous of his local enemies in order to forestall a malicious prosecution for maladministration” (825).

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of his predecessors, namely Flaccus, seems to have been rather lenient as far as the levying of certain taxes was concerned (see line 26). The striking aspect of this decree is not so much the contents of the communication as the fact that here Philo’s own nephew (Tiberius Julius Alexander was the son of his brother) mentions the arch-enemy of his uncle without even the slightest hint of criticism. But we should bear in mind here that Philo’s nephew was an apostate from Judaism.75 As to the papyri, in Pap. Boissier 176 we find the text of an edict issued in 34 CE by Flaccus that prohibits the carrying of arms and limits the use of them to strictly circumscribed persons and groups in the Egyptian chôra. It was probably during a visit to Thebes that he discovered that large numbers of civilians possessed weaponry, and fearing revolt he took instant measures: a search for weapons was done and those that were found were brought by river and by land to Alexandria (the episode is referred to by Philo in Flacc. 92). In P.Oxy 1089 (= CPJ 154), one of the manuscripts of the so-called Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs, Flaccus is presented as having a secret meeting in the Sarapieion with Isidorus and Dionysius, two of the leaders of the Alexandrian Jew-haters also mentioned by Philo (Flacc. 20 et aliter). However, not only is the papyrus full of lacunae and the text obscure, but also the story as far as it has been preserved is more of a novel than a historical document, as is the case with the other papyri containing fragments of the Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs.77 Finally there is an ostracon from 34 CE, a purchase-deed found in Thebes, in which Flaccus is only mentioned in passing as being present as the governor of that year.78 So this non-literary material does not yield much useful information. For the rest all we have to go by is Philo’s In Flaccum, which informs us mainly about the final year of Flaccus’ life (38-39 CE). If we leave aside most of what can reasonably be considered to be Philo’s invention or interpretation or at least exaggeration, we are left with the following outline. Flaccus made a promising start as governor since he demonstrated that he had great ability in handling his responsibilities. In order to prevent political unrest he closed the 75 See Burr 1955. For a recent edition of the two inscriptions with translation and commentary see Bernand 1992:I.126-136; II.141-153. 76 Mitteis-Wilcken 1912: no. 13. 77 See Musurillo 1954. 78 Wilcken 1899:II no. 1372 = Mitteis-Wilcken 1912: no. 414.

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clubs and associations and forbade the unlicensed possession of weapons. The situation began to change, however, after Caligula succeeded Tiberius in 37 CE. He became extremely nervous since he had supported Gemellus for this succession and also played a role in the prosecution of Caligula’s mother. Moreover, the emperor had forced Flaccus’ influential friend Macro, from whom he expected protection, to commit suicide. In this situation he was strongly advised by the leaders of the anti-Jewish Greeks in Alexandria to regain the emperor’s favor by backing them in their actions against the Alexandrian Jews. Under this pressure Flaccus began to damage the interests the Jews, first by withholding their congratulatory letter to Gaius on the occasion of his succession, later by other means. Things got out of hand when, in the summer of 38, a friend of the emperor, Agrippa (I), who was the grandson of Herod the Great, visited Alexandria on his way to his new kingdom in Palestine that he had just received from Caligula. The Jews welcomed him warmly and asked him to pass on their letter of congratulation to Gaius that Flaccus had neglected to forward to him. But the enemies of the Jews staged a mock ceremony in which Agrippa was ridiculed. Instead of punishing the instigators of this insult to a friend of the emperor, Flaccus turned a blind eye. He then issued a decree to the effect that Jews were from now on to be regarded as foreigners without rights in the city. This marked the beginning of violence against the Jews, and Flaccus refrained from taking official cognisance of the disturbances. In the weeks or months that followed many Jews were maltreated, tortured or killed in the violence that was tolerated by Flaccus, who apparently thought it was in his personal interest. Some time later, however, in the autumn of 38, suddenly a small detachment of undercover troops arrived from Rome, sent by Caligula, to arrest Flaccus. He was brought to Rome where he stood trial — we do not know the charges (see the notes ad §147) — and the men who were his accusers turned out to be the leaders of the faction which had urged him to secure his position by letting them persecute the Jews. Flaccus was sentenced for deportation to the island of Andros and his property was confiscated. He was brought to the island by Roman soldiers. Somewhat later, Caligula decided that this fate was too mild a punishment and he ordered Flaccus (and other deportees as well) to be executed. This execution took place on the island of Andros in the spring of 39 CE.

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Literature: Rohden 1896; Nicole 1898; Stein 1903; Mitteis-Wilcken 1913:22-24; Groag-Stein 1933:290; Balsdon 1934:129-134; Stein 1950: 26-28; Reinmuth 1956:528; Pelletier 1967:21-23; Kraus 1967:39-40 note 25; Sherwin-White 1972; Hennig 1974; Barraclough 1984:461468; Bureth 1988:477; Kienast 1997 (Parker 2000 deals only with the meaning of the name Flaccus: ‘lop-eared’) 6. Previous scholarship Major studies of Flacc. are few and far between. Apart from text editions (on which see below, §7), the most important works from the last century dealing with our treatise are the commentaries or annotated translations by Lewy 1935, Box 1939, Colson 1941, Gerschmann 1964, Pelletier 1967, Kraus 1967, and De Vries 1999.79 The only work from the period preceding the 20th century that deserves to be mentioned here is Delaunay 1867 (2nd ed. 1870). It is the most elaborate study of Flacc. and Legat. before 1900. The book consists of two parts: an almost 200-page introduction to the two historical treatises, and an almost 200 page annotated translation of them. In the lengthy introduction Delaunay deals first with Philo’s life and works in general. Thereafter he turns to the historical writings more specifically and describes their contents and literary merits. The bulk of the introduction, however, is taken up by a description of the vicissitudinous fate of the Jews during the first 100 years of Roman rule, from Pompey till Caligula. Most of the introduction is completely outdated now. The translation of the two treatises and the explanatory notes do not contain surprises. The tone of the annotations is sometimes moralizing and condescending. Even though he regards Philo as a trustworthy historian, he ends the final note on Flacc. with the remark that “c’est un document précieux et inédit d’histoire où se révèle, en traits éloquents, le caractère vindicatif de la race juive” (270). The book has mainly antiquarian value. Lewy 1935 is a small booklet (85 pages) which consists mainly of a German translation (and sometimes paraphrase) of a selection of passages from Flacc. and Legat., preceded by a very brief introduction of 4 pages; it is meant for a non-scholarly readership. The title, “Von 79 I have not been able to obtain or read the translations into modern Hebrew by Stein 1937 and Kasher in Daniel-Nataf 1986 and the recent Japanese translation by Hata 2000.

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den Machterweisen Gottes,” makes clear how Lewy understood the secondary title of Legat. in several manuscripts, peri; ajretw'n. He emphasizes that Philo’s message in his historical work (including the lost parts) is: “Alle vier Urheber der Verfolgungen: Sejan, Pilatus, Flaccus, Caligula, hatten nebst ihren Helfern im Laufe weniger Jahre ein schreckliches Ende gefunden” (7). Philo’s treatises are a “großartige Demonstration eines Judentums, das seinen Platz in der Welt kannte und wahrte, und dessen innere Kraft ausreichte, um die schwerste Probe zu bestehen” (8). Someone who writes and publishes sentences like these in Berlin in 1935, surrounded by Nazis, is a man whose courage should not be underestimated (neither should that of his publisher, Schocken Verlag). One can only surmise that Lewy’s motives for translating Philo’s treatises in Germany in the Hitler period were more or less the same as Philo’s own for writing them (cf. p. 10, “...die zeitlose Wirkung des Werkes, dessen Eindruck sich gerade geschichtsnahe Perioden wie die unsrige nicht entziehen können”). It is, therefore, honoris causa that I mention this book here. Box 1939 was the first major commentary on Flacc. and after almost 65 years it still remains a fundamental work. Box prints Reiter’s text (see §7) with his own translation on facing pages. It is preceded by a 50-page introduction and followed by a selective 65-page commentary on the Greek text. In the Introduction, Box deals in 8 chapters with all the major problems of Philo’s treatise. In “Alexandria and Rome” (xiii-xviii), he sketches the strained relationship between the city and Rome since the fall of Cleopatra and Anthony in 30 BCE. Octavianus’ victory “inaugurated an era of national humiliation” (xvi). The negative image of Alexandria in the Roman and Greek literature of the Empire is related to that tension. But “[i]f the Alexandrines were unstable, flippant, frivolous, superficial, it was because there was nothing for them on which to exercise their brains, except trade. Theirs was the tragedy of futility” (xvi). The anti-Roman sentiments come clearest to expression in the so-called Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs. In “The Alexandrine Dispersion” (xviii-xxx), Box discusses at length the position of the Jews in the city. He describes the mostly harmonious relations with the Ptolemies, evidenced — inter alia — by the fact that often the highest military commands in the Ptolemaic armies were in Jewish hands. Rome’s entry into Egyptian politics changed the situation drastically, however, because several times in the first century BCE the Jews supported the Romans against the Ptolemaic rulers. “The Jews fell away from the Ptolemies

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as soon as they realized that the fortunes of the dynasty were on the wane (...) and the deeply humiliated Alexandrines saw the Jews of the city favored by the Roman tyrants” (xix-xx). Small wonder that they were inclined to vent their anger upon the Jews with greater intensity because they could not direct it towards the Romans themselves. Box emphasizes that, after the publication of Claudius’ rediscovered letter to the Alexandrians and Jews of that city (= CPJ 153), it is no longer possible to maintain that the Jews had Alexandrian citizenship. Some individual Jews may have had it, the majority did not, however, and that had been the situation since the first Ptolemies till early Imperial times. They formed a politeuma (see Ep. Arist. 310), a semi-autonomous corporation with its own constitution and officials (although Box doubts whether all Jews were indeed members of this politeuma, rightly so; see Lüderitz 1994, who argues that the politeuma was only the governing body of the community). The advent of Rome induced the Jews to strive for a formally higher status in the city, that of fully enfranchised citizens. This angered the Greek Alexandrians who were adamantly opposed to it, and Claudius’ letter makes clear that the whole attempt on the part of the Jews was futile: the Jews live in a city “not their own,” even though he guaranteed them all the rights for which he found evidence in the past. Box’ next chapter, “Philo” (xxxi-xxxii), presents the meagre information we have about the author’s life, and he also points out that “by a curious irony of history the renegade nephew of the author of In Flaccum (...) became prefect of Egypt (67-70) and in that capacity quelled with ruthless but statesmanlike severity a rising of the Alexandrian Jews against their Greek neighbours” (xxxii; see Josephus, Bell. 2.492-498). In “In Flaccum” (xxxiii-xxxvii), Box deals with the relation between Flacc. and Legat: the complicated problem of the meaning of the very first word of Flacc., deuvtero" (see the note ad §1 ‘Sejanus’), the confusing reports of Eusebius, John of Damascus, and Photius about the works (how many, five or more?) Philo wrote about the events in the years 38-41 CE, the variety of titles of our treatise in the manuscript tradition, and related problems are dealt with concisely but yet in remarkable detail. In the extremely short paragraph “Character of In Flaccum” (xxxviii), Box only states that he follows Reiter in that probably the overall title of Philo’s five-volume work (of which Flacc. was the upbeat) was ajretaiv, meaning “manifestations of God’s power in saving His chosen people.”He says that this word “gives us the key to Philo’s conception of history.”

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In the chapter “The Conflict” (xxxviii-xlviii) Box argues that the real cause of the conflict was the Jewish attempt to obtain recognition of a claim to Alexandrian citizenship. Philo is unwilling to mention this cause since it ended in a debacle with Claudius’ rebuff. Philo’s own explanation is that the Greek leaders of the city, who had always hated the Jews, took advantage of the anxiety felt by Flaccus on the accession of Gaius whom he had very good reasons to fear, but Philo makes it hard for us to believe him fully since he does not explain the hatred of the Greeks. In “Sequel” (xlviii-liv) Box briefly summarizes the events of the period 38-41 CE, mainly on the basis of Legat. and Claudius’ letter (CPJ 153), partly also on what can be trusted to reflect historical circumstances in the Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs. Since this summary hardly deviates from our own (see above, the excursus at the end of §3), we will not summarize it here. In the final paragraph, “Summing Up” (liv-lvi), Box states that “the bloody conflict that broke out in Alexandria in the summer of 38 A.D. was traceable in the last analysis to the sinister repercussion on the imperial administration of the politics of the Roman court” (liv). But he now also states that Jewish monotheism, with its claim to be the chosen people of the one true God, could not go hand in hand with a claim to Alexandrian citizenship. “It was a selfish claim, an unneighbourly coveting of another’s vineyard, an intrusion into a realm the spiritual structure of which they affected to abhor” (lv). But the eviction of the Jews who lived outside the original Jewish quarter (a natural result of three centuries of growth of the Jewish community) “was as unneighbourly as the Jewish claim to Alexandrian citizenship” (lvi). Box’s commentary is characterized by its special attention for papyrological and epigraphic evidence that sheds light upon historical problems raised by Philo’s text. In this respect it remains unsurpassed and of lasting value, even though it is based upon a state of knowledge that is now outdated. The only real flaw of the book is that the commentary is rather uneven: some paragraphs of Philo’s work receive detailed attention, whereas others are simply skipped, even when there is ample reason for comment. The reader of the present commentary will notice that Box is the scholar most often referred to, which is to be taken as a testimony to the great achievement of this commentator. Colson’s Loeb Classical Library edition plus translation with notes was published very shortly after Box’s edition (in 1941). The text printed is that of Reiter in the Cohn-Wendland edition with only a

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handful of variant readings. In a short introduction (7 pages) Colson mainly summarizes the contents of the treatise. It is only on the final page that he gives his personal opinion on Philo’s treatise, which deserves to be quoted in full: “It is a powerful embodiment of that profound conviction that the nation is under the special Providence of God which has been the life and soul of Judaism throughout the centuries. This conviction naturally entails a belief that the enemies of Judaism are the enemies of God and their punishment a divine visitation. But this belief has its evil side, which seems to me to be very strongly exhibited in this treatise. In § 117 the Jews are represented as saying, ‘We do not rejoice at the punishment of an enemy because we have been taught by the Holy Laws to have human sympathy.’ This is easily said but not so easily done, and if Philo believed that he himself had learnt this lesson I think he deceived himself. He gloats over the misery of Flaccus in his fall, exile, and death, with a vindictiveness which I feel to be repulsive. (...) This is the only [treatise] which those who admire the beauty and spirituality so often shown both in the Commentary and Exposition might well wish to have been left unwritten” (301). Colson’s explanatory notes are very succinct as compared to those of Box and they mainly concern text-critical, grammatical and semantic matters, but he deals with some of the more important issues in the Appendix (531-538). There we find information about major figures such as Sejanus, Agrippa, Drusilla, Isidorus; but some of the major philological problems are dealt with as well, especially where Colson disagrees with Box. In his preface, Colson states that Box’s commentary “is on a scale which I could not attempt to rival” (ix), and he says that many of his own notes are largely founded on Box’s work. Pelletier (1967) too prints Reiter’s text, with a French translation on facing pages. There are 30 pages of introduction in which Pelletier deals with the nature of the treatise (“C’est une arétalogie,” 17), which he sees as patterned on the book of Esther and 2 Maccabees (Flaccus being the new Haman, Antiochus Epiphanes, and Nicanor); the historical value of the book, which he regards to be high (“il faut seulement tenir compte des inévitables déformations de l’éloquence chez les historiens de l’époque,” 19); the main actors in the story (Flaccus, Gaius, Agrippa, Macro, Isidorus, Lampo); and finally the political situation of the Jews in Alexandria. Here, as well as in his notes, Pelletier heavily leans upon Box; sometimes he simply

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translates Box’s notes (which he fairly indicates by an asterisk). But maybe Mary Smallwood’s judgement is too harsh when she says, “On the whole this is a disappointing book, but Pelletier’s task was a very difficult one when most of his thunder had been stolen thirty years ago [sc., by Box]” (Smallwood 1968:259), for at many places Pelletier adds new explanatory notes, and in general his interpretative remarks are much more elaborate than Colson’s. He, too, has an appendix with 16 ‘notes complémentaires’ and 4 excurses on a wide variety of topics, all of them very valuable. Reference will be duly made to most of them in my own commentary. In the same year as Pelletier’s commentary, the Italian scholar Clara Kraus (-Reggiani) published a major monograph on both Flacc. and Legat. (Kraus 1967). It is basically a translation of both treatises into Italian with a substantial introduction of some 160 pages instead of explanatory notes. Her study has a special background in that she was inspired to write this book by her own experiences during the Second World War. In her Introduction she states: “Ogni particolare del testo filoniano trova un parallelo perfettamente adeguato nei documenti storici e nelle trasposizioni drammatiche che testimoniano della persecuzione nazionalsocialistica” (10). It makes her critical of suggestions that Philo has exaggerated the degree of atrocity. After a brief sketch of the life and thoughtworld of Philo, Kraus presents a 20-page analysis of Flacc., the most important part of which is her investigation of and emphasis on the central role of dikê and pronoia in Flacc.: dikê (justitia punitiva) in God’s confronting the persecutor and pronoia (providentia) in God’s care for the persecuted. After a similar analysis of Legat., there is a chapter on the composition and structure of both historical treatises. Here Kraus deals with the problem of the relationship between Flacc. and Legat. and the question of whether there were more (now lost) writings by Philo, dealing with Sejanus and the death of Gaius, and with the problem of the title(s). No new solutions are proposed, but the evidence is presented and there is a useful criticul discussion of the confused and confusing evidence in Eusebius (both in his Chronicon and in the Historia Ecclesiastica). Kraus does, however, offer a new interpretation of the palinôdia in Legat. 373: in Philo’s view a palinôdia is always the result of metanoia (repentance, conversion); so the lost book (or chapters) with the palinôdia must have contained a story of Gaius’ repentance about the injustice and evil he had inflicted upon the Jews, thus creating a perfect parallellism with In Flaccum where Flaccus,

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too, utters a palinôdia in §§170-175 recognizing the righteousness of God’s punishment for his misdeeds. This seems a very probable suggestion indeed. In a chapter called ‘Interpretations’ (111-140), Kraus deals with a variety of topics, among which the following receive the most attention: the dating of the embassy to Gaius, comparison of data from Philo with those in the Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs, the independence of Flacc. vis-à-vis Legat. and vice versa, and the relationship between Philo’s philosophical and politico-historical writings. Finally she discusses the well-known problem of whether or not the Jews had full Alexandrian citizenship (most of them did not, only a happy few did). Thereafter follows the (non-annotated) Italian translation of both treatises. Even though this book does not offer striking new insights, it is a thorough study of the major issues in both Philonic treatises. The most recent annotated translation is that by a Dutch historian of antiquity, De Vries (1999; it also contains the Legatio). In a 30 page introduction De Vries presents a brief sketch of the historical circumstances in Alexandria during the years 38-41 CE, with special attention to the position of the Jews in the city. He also briefly discusses the phenomenon of ancient Jew-hatred. The main protagonists of the drama (Flaccus, Caligula, Agrippa) are dealt with as well. Under the title “Pogrom in Alexandrië” a rather free but eminently readable Dutch translation is offered, followed by 15 pages of short explanatory notes, mainly of a historical nature. What gives the book a special value is the large appendix (70 pages) in which De Vries presents (in Dutch translation) a wide selection of ancient texts that are relevant to the understanding of both Flacc. and Legat. Papyri, inscriptions, biblical passages, Strabo’s description of Alexandria, many chapters from Josephus, Cassius Dio, Tacitus, Suetonius, but also from the Talmud and midrashic works are presented here in translation, with annotations added. Finally we will briefly pass in review only a selection of the most important short studies in the form of articles or chapters in books, all of them published in the past 15 years. Bergmann-Hoffmann 1987 deal with Flacc. as a source for the study of the political dimensions of the conflict in 38 CE, which they argue are the most important ones. They view the situation as one of a conflict of interests and as a situation of political competition between Greeks and Jews. The whole conflict was a matter of power struggle and of purposeful political action. For that reason the Alexandrian

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clubs or associations that formed the political centre of the Greek polis played a crucial role in the riots. Anti-Semitism was not the cause but the result of this conflict of interest. Philo’s view that “innate hatred” on the part of the non-Jews played a major role is a distortion of the factual situation. The Greeks simply were adamantly opposed to the Jewish wish for greater political rights and power. Religion played hardly a role in the conflict. Severe criticism of this interpretation of the events came from Schäfer 1997:136-160 (esp. 156-160). He argues that this approach is very problematic and accuses the authors of downplaying evidence that points in the direction of ‘Judaeophobia’ among the population of Alexandria at large. Schäfer opines that when Philo speaks of Alexandrians he means first and foremost the native Egyptians, only in the second instance the Greeks. The Jews became their victims when Caligula’s accession disturbed the balance of power in Alexandria. Not that the Jews were only passive players, for the events around Agrippa’s visit prove that they tried to turn this into a political advantage. Flaccus’ edict seems to have pertained to “the most essential elements of the social and political life of the Jews in Alexandria” (144). Whatever the civic status of the Jews before 38 may have been, “it becomes clear that the Alexandrians succeeded in changing radically the delicate and complicated balance between the different ethnic factions in Alexandria; Flaccus’ decree is taken as a charter for anti-Jewish riots and paves the way for horrible massacres” (144). Philo’s message is that more than the Greeks it is the Egyptians “who represent the hotbed of anti-Jewish resentment” (145). This is to be explained against the background of centuries of hate-mongering by Alexandrian writers who published ever more glaring anti-Jewish stories in which the Jews were painted as criminals and the archenemies of not only the Egyptians but of humankind as a whole. So even though the conflict between Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians was first and foremost a political conflict, it is naive to separate this from the cultural-religious aspects of the conflict. “Cultural-religious and political aspects were inextricably interwoven in the conflict in Alexandria, and it is precisely this amalgam of political goals and (mainly) Egyptian hatred of the Jews which makes it unique and may allow us to speak of Alexandrian anti-Semitism” (160). Kraus 1994 (not the same person as Kraus 1967) argues that it is improbable that an author who spent most of his time in interpreting the Bible from a philosophical point of view would suddenly cease to

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be a philosopher when he wrote about historical events and, therefore, “the classification of In Flaccum as an historical work obscures reasons for a philosophical reading of Philo’s narrative” (478). Philo’s emphasis on God’s providence and his assumption that character and politics are intertwined illustrate this. Moreover, “the relationship between God and the ideal character of government indicates that Philo’s philosophy informs his politics” (479). Philo’s philosophical world-view governs his interpretation of current historical events, and that is why he constructed an exact symmetry between the suffering of the Jews and the punishment of Flaccus. It is especially in his rendering of Flaccus’ inner monologues and his prayers (which Philo could not have known) that the Jewish thinker reveals his philosophy of divine juistice and retribution. Alston 1997 observes that, according to Flacc., during the persecutions the Jews were excluded from public space but that exactly the same happened to Flaccus after his deportation. This symmetry demonstrates that God’s justice was at work. A detailed list of parallels demonstrates that in Philo’s ‘diptych’ the parallellism has the function to underscore the operation of justice. So the best and only defence of the Jews was to rely on God. Meiser 1999 classifies Flacc. as a work of ‘mimetic historiography,’ a genre the purpose of which is to present the events in such a way as to influence the readers and to encourage them to act accordingly. The target audience, therefore, was not Jewish but pagan readers (426-9). Flaccus’ speeches at Andros make these readers aware of the punishing providence of the God of the Jews. So they better change their ways of treating the Jews. In a recent contribution, Peder Borgen (2000) regards this treatise as not just a historical work but as ‘interpreted history.’ After summarizing the positions of Kraus, Meiser, and Alston, he presents a list of similarities between Flacc. and other writings of Philo. For instance the motif of leaders and nations going beyond human limits by exalting themselves above men and nature and consequently being thrown down by God occurs in several writings by Philo, as it does in Flacc., so too sharp a distinction between Flacc. and his other writings should not be drawn. Other similarities as well “support the view that Philo has applied Pentateuchal principles, as understood and formulated by him, to his interpretation of historical events in Against Flaccus” (49). Borgen claims that in Flacc., too, Philo interprets the Mosaic laws as the community laws of the Jews; see for instance the

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violation of the customs relative to the synagogue when Flaccus permitted the installation of statues of the emperor in them (§§41-53), or the scene with the forcible eating of pork by Jewish women (§96). The events themselves “needed somehow to be interpreted within the context of Jewish laws which were a manifestation of God’s cosmic law” (52). The implication is that Philo had a dual audience in mind, both Jews and non-Jews. Borgen then compares the way Antiochus IV is described in 2 Macc. with Philo’s picture of Flaccus (suggested already by Pelletier 1967:16-19). Both were punished for their persecution of the Jews and repented, but in vain; their divine death sentences were carried out even so (Antiochus’ letter to the Jews in 2 Macc. 9 is the parallel to Flaccus’ prayer in §§170-174). By examining similarities and differences between Flacc. and other Jewish writings, Philo’s treatise can be understood within a broader context. In the most recent contribution to the study of Flacc., Gruen (2002:54-83) argues in a detailed exposition that Philo is unconvincing when he tries to portray Flaccus as the arch villain. “Philo’s narrative itself undermines his own portrait, one guided more by dramatic needs (a story culminating in Flaccus’ fall and repentance) than by history. Flaccus’ insecurities after the loss of his patrons in Rome, his anxieties about alienating constituencies in Alexandria, and the need to fend off pressures from militant Alexandrians and lobbying by Jewish leaders, while maintaining a semblance of order in the city lest he be denounced to the authorities at home, created a bundle of tensions that the prefect never successfully negotiated. (...) His tenure collapsed through ineptitude rather than malice” (60). The real culprits were the Greek leaders (Isidorus c.s.) whom Flaccus had made into his enemies by his measures against their associations or clubs (Flacc. 4). “The[se] prodders endeavored to create disturbances that could demonstrate the incompetence of the prefect” (61). Flaccus, who was nervous after Gaius’ accession and in need of influential support, went along with the anti-Jewish attacks but events spiraled out of his control and “the hapless governor had to take the blame” (61). Isidorus cum suis now bribed demonstrators to hurl public abuse at Flaccus, and as a countermeasure the governor set up a tribunal which resulted in the flight of the instigators of the riots (Flacc. 137-145). But it was already too late. In the meantime information about the riots had reached Gaius, who had Flaccus arrested and brought back to Rome where his erstwhile “friends” now seized the opportunity to denounce him, which finally led to his condemnation.

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Gruen makes the suggestion that Isidorus c.s. “may well have been behind the initial denunciations that led to Flaccus’ removal to Rome” (61). But all this, says Gruen, does not yet account sufficiently for the scale and the viciousness of the attacks on the Jews. There is more to it. Gruen argues that so far research has been focussing too much on the Greeks as the antagonists of the Jews in Alexandria. It is much more probable that it was the unprivileged underclass of the Egyptians in the city that seized this opportunity to vent their frustrations on the privileged Jews. It is exactly for that reason that Philo speaks of the deep-rooted hostility of rank and file Egyptians (Flacc. 29). So it is wrong when scholars explain Philo’s censuring the Egyptians as the culprits as nothing but a deliberate insult to the Alexandrian Greeks by lumping them with Egyptians, because that fails to account for the fact that Philo sometimes sharply distinguishes between Alexandrians and Egyptians (280-1 note 74). Josephus, too, singles out the Egyptians as the principal antagonists of the Jews, and so did the authors of Or. Sib. 3, Sap. Sal., Jos. et As., and 3 Macc. “Certain Greek malcontents may have set matters in motion, prodding Flaccus into actions that would discredit him and providing the outlet for pent-up passions among the populace to explode on the scene; but the pent-up passions belonged primarily to Egyptians rather than to the Greeks” (65). Also the sequel of the story, the ways in which Gaius and Claudius dealt with the conflict, does not give proof of anti-Jewish animosity on the part of these rulers, only irritation. Like the Greeks, the Romans were amused or surprised about or indifferent towards the Jews, not hostile. For whatever reasons, it was the Egyptians who evinced hatred of the Jews. In a very detailed argument that cannot be summarized here Gruen also argues that the much-debated matter of whether or not the Jews had or strove after citizenship in Alexandria is a non-issue: They did not have it, they did not try to get it, it was totally irrelevant to them, and it had nothing to do with the outburst of violence in 38. The pogrom of that year was an exceptional event. On the whole one could say that the Jewish community of Alexandria flourished for nearly four full centuries (from the founding of the city at the beginning of the Ptolemaic era to the outburst of the great war of in 66 CE). “The dreadful pogrom of 38 in no way defines or exemplifies the history of Jews in Alexandria” (83).80 80 Since Gruen’s work was published only when the manuscript of the present book was practically completed, the debate with Gruen’s interpretation in my

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Looking back, we can say without exaggeration that Box’s commentary of 1939 is the most fundamental work that has been published on Flacc. in the 20th century. It is, however, inevitably out of date in several respects since it reflects the state of research of 65 years ago. A new commentary that incorporates knowledge and insights won in those years is, therefore, a desideratum. 7. The text of the treatise The manuscript tradition of the Greek text of Flacc. has been described in admirable detail by Reiter in the Prolegomena (in Latin) to vol. 6 of the standard edition by Cohn-Wendland (Reiter 1915; but see also Cohn 1896). The reader is referred to that publication for full information. It is also Reiter’s text edition in the same volume that forms the basis of our translation. All later editions of Flacc. are based on Reiter’s excellent edition (with minor deviations) and no new textual evidence has come to light in the meantime. Where I depart from his text, on the basis of data from his own apparatus criticus, will be noted in footnotes to the translation and in the commentary. Since there is no need to repeat what every interested student can read in Reiter’s 40-page textual study, I will present the reader only with a brief summary of the textual evidence. There are only five manuscripts that contain the text of Flacc.: M, A, G, H, and L (on which see below). In some of the other codices containing works of Philo one sometimes finds short excerpts or citations from Flacc., but these hardly yield materials important for the constitution of the text. In the 11 excerpts from Flacc. in the Sacra Parallella of John of Damascus, the majority of the variant readings are inferior, only occasionally do they offer a text that is superior to that in the manuscripts (see, for instance, the note on ‘documents’ in §131). Sometimes they support the only manuscript or a minority of manuscripts with the correct reading over against the others. (The same applies to the quotations in medieval gnomologies which are mainly based upon the Sacra Parallella.) There is one place, however, where John of Damascus quotes a passage ejk tw'n kata; Flavkkon [sic] that is not to be found in any of the extant manuscripts: oujk e[sti para; qew'/ ou[te ponhro;n o[nta ajpolevsai to;n ajgaqo;n misqo;n peri; eJno;" ajgaqou' meta; pleiovnwn kakw'n pepragmevnou ou[te pavlin ajgaqo;n commentary could only be very limited.

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introduction o[nta ajpolevsai th;n kovlasin kai; mh; labei'n aujth;n eij meta; pleiovnwn ajgaqw'n e{n ti gevnhtai ponhrovn: ajnavgkh ga;r zugw'/ kai; staqmw'/ pavnta ajpodidovnai to;n qeovn (with God it is neither possible that a bad person does not receive his good recompense for the one good thing he did amidst of a majority of bad things nor that a good person would escape and not receive punishment if among the majority of his good acts there is one bad act; for it is of necessity the case that in all instances God pays recompense in balance and fairness).

It is very hard to say where in Flacc. this passage could have belonged. If, however, John of Damascus is right that these sentences are from Flacc. — and we have no way of knowing it for sure — we have to assume that the treatise as it has come down to us is incomplete. And according to some scholars there are other reasons to assume this as well. One of these reasons is the abrupt and strange transition between §§ 28 and 29 which has been taken by some scholars to imply that there is a gap in the text here. That is, however, not compelling (see my note ad locum). Others have interpreted the way Philo begins the book as presented in the manuscripts as implying that something now lost preceded it. The words Deuvtero" meta; Shiano;n Flavkko" ktl. seem to suggest that the story about Flaccus’ persecution of the Jews was only the sequel to a similar story about Sejanus. And the same seems to be implied at the end of the book, where Philo says “Such were the sufferings of Flaccus, too (toiau'ta kai; Flavkko" e[paqe),” another reference to a lost story about Sejanus. But this need not imply the loss of text of passages in Flacc. It more probably implies loss of a separate book, or a part of a book, in which Philo described Sejanus’ activities.81 Finally, in §76 Philo says that the enormous scale of Flaccus’ aggression has been fully proved “by other evidence” but this translation of di∆ eJtevrwn is uncertain (see my note ad locum) and, even if the translation proves correct, it does not necessarily imply that someplace else in the text there are lacunae (pace Box 1939: xxxiii note 1). So the only weighty reason to assume that the text of Flacc. has not been preserved integrally is the quote from John of Damascus. But John may simply be mistaken. It is impossible to solve this problem. Now back to the manuscripts themselves. Reiter reckons M and G to the category of superior codices, judges A to take a middle position, and relegates H and L to the inferior category. Although M 81

See above (pp. 5-6) and Morris 1973/87:859-860.

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and G are the best witnesses, G is not complete for it has a large lacuna halfway. Ms. M, from Florence, which is our best complete witness (see Reiter 1915:liv-lv), dates to the beginning of the 13th century; ms. G, from the Vatican, is from the 14th century; ms. A, from München, dates from the 13th century; ms. H, from Venice, is from the 14th century; and ms. L, from Paris, dates to the first half of the 16th century. So all major mss. were produced in the period between 1200 and 1550. However reliable the mss. M and G may be regarded to be, the reader should realize that there is a time gap of at least some 11 or 12 centuries between Philo’s autograph and the copies we use to reconstruct this autograph; and unfortunately we don’t have any early papyri of Flacc. that enable us to check modern reconstructions against evidence more ancient than our oldest manuscripts. Even so there is no reason to despair about the reconstruction of a relatively reliable text of Philo. In the case of many other authors from antiquity the textual tradition is often considerably less favorable. The meticulous analysis of the manuscript tradition by Cohn and Reiter can still be relied upon. 8. The present commentary In the new translation offered here I heavily lean upon those of Box and Colson, although I have tried to steer clear of the somewhat archaic parlance found in their renderings. When Philo’s sentences are cumbersome because of their length, I often have cut them into two or three parts to make them more readable, and I have also avoided — if possible — the many participial constructions Philo uses, although otherwise I have striven after a rendering as literal as possible. But I can only agree with the author of volume 1 in this series when he states that “it is well-nigh impossible to render the meaning of a text both accurately and fluently, and still capture something of the style and flavour of the original.”82 The truth of the Italian proverb ‘traduttore traditore’ (a translator is a traitor) was constantly felt by the present translator. The commentary does not aim to be exhaustive. The reader is offered in a concise manner what the commentator thinks is necessary for or conducive to a better understanding of Philo’s text. When sometimes the reader is referred to Box or one of the other earlier commentators for more details, the essential information has never82

Runia 2001:44.

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theless been presented in the present commentary. Discussions of philological and stylistic matters and references to scholarly literature have of necessity been selective. The differences in style and format with the previous commentary in this series (Runia 2001) have for the most part been dictated by the very different nature of the treatise concerned. A Note on ‘Nachleben’ An important feature of the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series (PACS) is the attention paid to the Nachleben of each individual treatise. In his commentary on Opif., David Runia not only deals with its Nachleben in general in the Introduction, but also every section of the commentary closes with a paragraph on the influence that section of the treatise exercised on later ancient authors. The present commentary is different also in that respect. The simple reason for that difference is that, in contradistinction to most other treatises of Philo, In Flaccum had hardly any Nachleben in antiquity at all. Josephus’ strikingly brief reference to the riots in Alexandria — in Ant. 18:257 he spends 11 words on these events, Philo more than 11,000 — may or may not be based on Flacc., we simply do not know. Josephus generally does not show acquaintance with Philo’s work (but see Runia 2002:222), and his neglect of the pogrom of 38 CE reinforces the impression that he did not know In Flaccum. In the section on genre I drew a parallel between Philo’s treatise and Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum, but again we have to conclude that, in spite of remarkable thematic agreement between the two works, there is no reason at all to assume that Lactantius knew or was influenced by Philo. As we saw in the first chapter of this Introduction, in his Hist. Eccl. 2.5 Eusebius briefly mentions Philo’s report of the events in 38-40 (although there only the Legatio is mentioned by name) in his short description of the reign of Caligula, and he repeats that information in his Chron. ad Ol. 204, Tiberius 21 (although there he does mention the treatise by name, but cf. Hist. Eccl. 2.18.8). Syncellus repeats this information in his excerpts from Eusebius (Ecl. Chron. ed. Mosshammer p. 399, cf. p.402) as does Photius (Bibl. cod. 105 ed. Henry II p.72). Finally there are some unidentified quotes from Flacc. in John of Damascus (see Introd. ch. 7). That is all.83 83 These texts have been conveniently assembled (and translated into Italian) in Runia-Radice 1999:378-380, 434, 436.

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Nowhere else do we find a more extensive reflection on the contents of the work or any other sign of influence.84 It is Philo’s allegorical exegetical treatises that won the day, not his “historical” works.

84 It is striking that the first Jewish author to devote attention to Philo since antiquity, the Italian scholar Azariah de’ Rossi in his work Me’or eynayim of 1572, quotes numerous passages from Philo’s treatises but none from Flacc; see Weinberg 2001:783-785.

TRANSLATION OF IN FLACCUM1

On Flaccus I. Flaccus’ Persecution of the Jews §§1-7 Flaccus’ Promising Start (1) After Sejanus it was Avillius Flaccus who continued his policy of persecuting the Jews. Even though he was not in the same position as Sejanus to wrong the entire (Jewish) people openly in that he had less resources and occasions to do so, yet he inflicted irreparable evils upon all who came within his reach. But in addition to that, even though he seemed to attack only a part (of our people), as a matter of fact he extended his schemes, more by means of craft than of power, and tried to bring everyone everywhere within his field of fire. For those who are by nature tyrannical but do not have power at their disposal, employ cunning wiles in order to achieve their malignant designs. (2) This Flaccus then, who was reckoned among the friends of the emperor Tiberius, was appointed as the prefect of Alexandria and the country round about it after the death of Hiberus, who had been the prefect of Egypt. Initially, this man (Flaccus) gave innumerable proofs of his excellence, as far as appearance went. For he was prudent, persevering, acute in devising and carrying out his plans, very eloquent and quick at understanding what was left unsaid better even than what was said. (3) At any rate, in a short time he became acquainted with Egyptian affairs, and these are complex and diversified, hardly grasped even by those who have made it their task to study them from their early years. His secretaries were a superfluous crowd since everything, whether trivial or important, was within the reach of his own experience. He not only surpassed them but also, because of his accuracy, he became the master instead of the student of his former teachers. 1 At only five places I adopt a reading different from Reiter’s text in the standard edition by Cohn-Wendland. These places have been indicated and the text-critical problems are discussed in the commentary.

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(4) All matters pertaining to financial accountancy and the administration of revenues were dealt with competently by him, but, however important and vital these matters were, they yet did not in any way give hint of the fact that he had the soul of a leader. But the qualities that did indicate (his possession of) a more illustrious and kingly nature, those he demonstrated with greater freedom. For instance, he used to walk with stateliness, for ostentation is always very useful for a ruler. He used to judge important cases in cooperation with the magistrates, he pulled down the arrogant, and he always prevented a motley crowd of people from all quarters from conspiring. He also prohibited the clubs and associations which were continually feasting together under pretext of sacrifices, whereas in fact they behaved like inebriates, and he dealt severely and vigorously with those who refused to obey him. (5) Thereafter, when he had established law and order throughout the city and the country, he proceeded in turn to concentrate his attention on the armed forces, by setting them in array and disciplining them, and by training the infantry, the cavalry, and the lightarmed soldiers. He also taught the commanders not to deprive the soldiers of their pay because by doing so they would instigate them to acts of bandrity and robbery, and (he taught) each of the soldiers not to meddle with affairs that fell outside their military service but to keep in mind that they were also appointed to be a peace-keeping force. (6) Perhaps someone will say now, “My dear fellow, you have decided to accuse a person only to bring no charge whatsoever against him but, on the contrary, weave a long string of praises! Have you lost your mind and gone mad?” No, I have not gone mad, dear friend, neither am I a fool who is unable to see what a consistent argument is. (7) I praise Flaccus not because it is the right thing to praise an enemy but in order to enable myself to expose his wickedness even more clearly. Pardon is usually given to someone who sins through ignorance of what is better, but someone who does wrong knowingly has no excuse but is already condemned by the tribunal of his own conscience. §§8-20 Flaccus’ Degeneration (8) For when he had received the prefecture for a period of six years, in the first five years — that is, when the emperor Tiberius was still alive — he not only maintained peace but also functioned as a

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governor with such energy and vigour that he surpassed all his predecessors. (9) But in his last year, after Tiberius had died and Gaius been appointed emperor, his grip began to slacken and he began to let everything slip from his hands. It may have been caused by his profound sorrow over Tiberius, for from his continuous state of dejection and the endless stream of tears that poured without interruption from him as from a fountain it was clear that he was really deeply grieved as if he had lost his closest friend. It may also have been due to the fact that he cherished animosity towards (Tiberius’) successor, either because he had sided with the party of the real rather than the adopted children, or — still another possibility — because he was one of those who had conspired against Gaius’ mother in the time that she was accused of matters which led to her execution. So it was also fear of being held guilty that caused his neglect of duties. (10) For some time he still could summon the power to prevent the affairs of state from slipping entirely out of his hands. When, however, he heard that Tiberius’ grandson and his partner in government had been killed at Gaius’ command, he was struck by an indescribable sense of misfortune and threw himself on the ground and lay there speechless, with a mind that had been enfeebled and paralysed already long before [?]. (11) For as long as the child was still alive, he could still cherish the sparks of hope of his own survival, but now that it was dead, it seemed that his personal hope had died with it, even though a little breeze of protection might still be blowing, namely, his friendship with Macro, who initially had an allpowerful position with Gaius and whose contribution to his rise to power — and still more to his safety — is said to have been greater than anyone else’s. (12) Tiberius had often considered the possibility of getting Gaius out of the way since he regarded him as a malicious person who was not gifted by nature for the exercise of rulership, but also out of concern for his grandson, for he feared that his own death would imply that his grandson would be got rid of (by Gaius) as well. Macro had often discarded these suspicions and praised Gaius as an honest, harmless and sociable person and someone so strongly aware of his inferiority to his cousin that he would be glad to yield the supreme rulership to him alone, or at any rate the first place in everything.

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(13) Deceived as he was by these words, he (Tiberius) did not notice that he left behind him an irreconcilable enemy of himself, his grandson, his family, Macro the intercessor, and the rest of humanity. (14) For when Macro saw that he went astray and let his unbridled impulses have their way, wherever and in whatever way, he would admonish and reprove him, supposing that he was still the same Gaius who during Tiberius’ life had been reasonable and docile. But, to his misfortune, he paid the highest penalty for his excessive goodwill and was murdered with his whole family, wife and children, as if he were a superfluous burden and a nuisance. (15) For whenever he (Gaius) saw from afar that he (Macro) was coming to him, he used to say the following to his company: “Let us not smile, let us look downcast. There comes the censor, the strict moralist, the person who has now begun to act as a tutor of an adult man who is the emperor, and that precisely at a moment when the tutors from my early youth have been dismissed and sent away.” (16) When Flaccus realized that he (Macro) too had been put to death, he completely lost the hope that had still been left, and he was no longer able to take to hand public affairs as he used to do, for he was totally exhausted and lost control of his mind. (17) But when a ruler begins to despair of his capacity to exercise authority, it is inevitable that his subjects immediately start a rebellion, particularly those who have a natural penchant for working themselves into a state of excitement over trivialities and ordinary occurrences. Among this kind of people the Egyptian nation holds pride of place, since it is its custom to let the tiniest spark swell into great seditions. (18) Having come into an impossible blind-alley situation, Flaccus began to behave erratically and, in parallel with the deterioration of his reasoning capacity, he changed all of his recent policy, beginning with those who were nearest to him. Those who were well-disposed towards him and his most sincere friends, he suspected and drove away, but those who had been his declared enemies from the beginning, he reconciled himself to and made them his advisers in every matter. (19) These, however, were rancorous people, and what seemed to be a reconciliation was a counterfeit, existing only in words; in reality they cherished in their hearts an implacable enmity against him, and although they were only feigning genuine friendship, like actors do in a theatre, they managed to carry him away completely. Thus

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the ruler became a subject and the subjects became leaders. They advanced the most harmful proposals and had them immediately ratified. (20) For they became guarantors of all their own plans and, as in a theatre play, they put him (Flaccus) on stage as no more than a masked dummy with the title ‘government’ inscribed upon it, merely for show, they themselves being nothing but a bunch of popularityhunters such as Dionysius, document-tamperers such as Lampo, sedition-leaders such as Isidorus, meddlers, devisers of evils, “citytroublemakers.” This was the way he (Flaccus) exercised the title (of ruler). §§21-24 Flaccus Begins to Injure the Jews (21) All of them united in developing a plot that was most grievous to the Jewish community. In a private conversation with Flaccus they said: (22) “Gone are the expectations you had of the boy Tiberius Nero; gone too is your next hope, your friend Macro, and what you can expect from the emperor does not look very favorable either. For this reason, we have to find a very powerful intercessor by whom Gaius may be propitiated. (23) That intercessor is the city of Alexandria, which has been honored from the beginning by the entire imperial family, especially by the present master. Intercede it will, if it receives some present from you. And you can give it no greater bonus than by handing over and abandoning the Jews.” (24) Upon hearing these things, he should have angrily rejected the speakers as revolutionaries and public enemies, but instead he agreed with what they said. Initially, the schemes he plotted (against the Jews) were less evident, for instance, not giving an impartial and equal hearing to parties involved in conflicts and inclining more to one side than another. In other matters he did not allow equal freedom of speech to both parties, but whenever Jews approached him, he turned away from them, and it was only towards them that he showed this unpleasant behaviour. Later, however, he exhibited his ill-will openly as well. §§25-35 King Agrippa (25) His insanity, which was due to instruction from others rather than to his own nature, was further aggravated by the following incident. The emperor Gaius gave Agrippa, the grandson of king Herod, as his kingdom a third of his grandfather’s inheritance, of which Philip the tetrarch, his paternal uncle, used to enjoy the usufruct.

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(26) When Agrippa was about to leave, Gaius advised him not to make the voyage to Syria via Brindisium, because that made for a long and tiresome trip, but to wait for the trade winds and then take the shorter route via Alexandria. He said that the trading vessels that departed from there were very fast and had highly experienced pilots, who guided their ships like charioteers driving their racehorses, keeping them straight and on course. Agrippa complied with this advice because Gaius was his master but also because it seemed that the advice he had been given was useful. (27) He went down to Dicaearchia and when he saw there ships from Alexandria lying at anchor and ready to sail, he embarked with his retinue. He had a prosperous voyage, and after only a few days he arrived at his destination without anybody expecting him or finding out that he was there. He commanded the pilots to furl the sails — for in the late afternoon Pharos had come into sight — and to remain offshore in the immediate neighbourhood until the late evening, and then by night to enter the harbor in order that he could disembark when everybody was asleep and get to the house of his host without anyone seeing him. (28) The reason for such an unobtrusive arrival was that he wished, if possible, to get out of town again without anybody there having noticed. As a matter of fact, he had not come to Alexandria to sight-see as he had visited it before, when he was on his way to Rome to see Tiberius. The only reason he was there was to take a shortcut home. (29) But envy is an inborn characteristic of the Egyptians, and they regard anyone else’s good luck as their own bad luck, which is the reason why they were bursting with envy. At the same time, in their ancient and, in a sense, innate enmity towards the Jews, they were vexed by the idea that a Jew had become a king, which was to them as if each of them had been deprived of an ancestral kingdom. (30) So, poor Flaccus was again incited by his companions, who stimulated and provoked him into the same state of envy as their own. They said, “The visit of this man here means your own downfall! He has been invested with a greater dignity of honor and prestige than you have. He is attracting the attention of all men by the sight of his spear-carrying army of bodyguards with their weapons adorned with silver and gold. (31) For was it really necessary for him to enter the territory of another ruler whereas a prosperous voyage could

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have brought him safely to his own domain? For even if Gaius did permit or even command him to do so, he should have beseeched him to be excused from coming here, in order to prevent the governor of this country from being surpassed and consequently dishonored.” (32) When Flaccus heard this, his anger swelled still more than before, and although in public, out of fear of the one who had sent him, he pretended to be Agrippa’s comrade and friend, in private he gave clear expression to his jealousy and hatred; he insulted him behind his back because he was too much of a coward to do so openly. (33) For he did allow the lazy and unoccupied mob of the city — that is a multitude of people practised in endless talking who spend their time with slander and calumny — to speak evil of the king, either starting the campaign of abuse himself or exhorting and inciting others to do so with the help of those who used to be his servants in such matters. (34) They, having received the cue given them, spent their days in the gymnasium reviling the king and gibing at him non-stop. In a sense, they took the writers of mimes and farces as their teachers and thus demonstrated their natural ability in disgraceful things, slow to be trained in anything good but very quick and eager in learning the opposite. (35) Why, then, did he not become angry?, why did he not arrest them?, why did he not punish them on account of their insolent slander? Even if Agrippa had not been a king but only one of the members of Caesar’s household, did he not deserve to be treated with at least some privilege and honor? Actually, all this is clear evidence that Flaccus was guilty of and a participator in this campaign of slander. For the one who was in the position to punish them, or at the least to stop them if not prevent them, was the one who gave them permission and consented with them himself. If an undisciplined mob is given the opportunity for misconduct, it will not desist, but it will pass from one transgression to another, continually adding new forms of evil. §§36-40 Karabas (36) Now there was a lunatic named Karabas, whose madness was not of the wild and savage kind, against which neither the madmen themselves nor those in their vicinity can protect themselves, but of the more relaxed and gentler variant. He spent both day and night

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naked on the streets, not discouraged by heat or cold, a plaything of the children and the youngsters who were idling about. (37) Together they drove this poor man into the gymnasium and placed him there on a platform so that he could be seen by everyone. On his head they spread out a piece of papyrus for a diadem and clothed the rest of his body with a doormat for a robe; and someone who had seen a small piece of native papyrus lying on the street, gave it to him for a sceptre. (38) And when, as in a theatrical mime, he had been dressed up like a king and received the insignia of kingship, young men, bearing sticks on their shoulders as if they were carrying spears, stood on either side of him in imitation of bodyguards. Then others approached him, some as if to salute him, others as if to plead their cause before him, again others as if to consult him about the affairs of the state. (39) Then there arose a strange shout from among the multitude of those standing around him: They called him ‘Marin’ — which is said to be the word for ‘Lord’ in Syriac — for they knew that Agrippa not only was by birth a Syrian but also ruled as a king over a great part of Syria. (40) When Flaccus heard, or rather saw all this, he should not only have arrested the madman and put him in prison, in order to prevent him from giving an opportunity to the revilers to insult their superiors, but he should also have punished the ones responsible for dressing him up like that, for they had dared in both deeds and words, both openly and indirectly, to insult someone who was a king and a friend of Caesar, someone who had been honored by the Senate of Rome with the praetorian insignia. But not only did he not punish them, he did not even think fit to restrain them, but he gave license and impunity to all those who were so malevolent and malicious, and he pretended not to see what he did see and not to hear what he did hear. §§41-44 The Overtures to the Pogrom (41) The crowd perceived this — I do not refer to the peaceful and decent inhabitants but to the rabble that is always intent on creating confusion and turmoil, interfering and in pursuit of a life not worth living, habitually idle and lazy and always causing trouble. They flocked into the theatre first thing in the morning, knowing that they already had Flaccus in their pocket for less than a penny, which this man in his lust for fame, this good-for-nothing, had

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accepted to the injury not only of himself but also of the public safety. They shouted, as if with one mouth, that statues should be erected in the synagogues, thus proposing an entirely novel and unprecedented violation of the law. (42) And they knew this, for they are very acute in their wickedness, and they cunningly used the name of Caesar as a smokescreen, a name to which it is unlawful to attribute any blameworthy action. (43) What then did the governor of the country do? He knew that the city, as the rest of Egypt, has two kinds of inhabitants, us and them, and that there are no less than one million Jews living in Alexandria and the rest of the country, from the steep slope that separates us from Libya to the boundaries of Ethiopia. He also knew that the attack was directed against us all and that it would not yield anything good if they tried to disrupt our ancestral customs. Yet, in disregard of all this, he permitted them to erect the statues, even though there were innumerable considerations, all of cautionary character, which he could have put forward either as an order from the ruler or as advice from a friend. (44) He, however, co-operated with them in each and every one of their misdeeds and therefore thought fit to use his position of superior power to kindle the sedition by adding newer forms of evil and, as far as it was in his power, one may almost say that he filled the whole world with civil wars. §§45-52 The Jewish Point of View (45) For it was more than clear that the rumor of the destruction of the synagogues that started in Alexandria would spread immediately to the districts of Egypt and speed from Egypt eastwards to the oriental nations, and from the coastal strip and Mareia, which are the borders of Libya, westwards to the nations living there. For there is not one country that can contain all the Jews, so numerous are they. (46) It is for this reason that they settle in most of the wealthiest countries of Europe and Asia, both their islands and the mainland. However, it is the holy city where the sacred temple of the Most High God stands, that they regard as their mother city, but the regions they obtained from their fathers, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers, and even more remote ancestors, to live in, (they regard) as their fatherland where they were born and brought up. There are also some regions where they came to as immigrants at the very moment of their foundation, much to the pleasure of the founders.

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(47) There was reason to fear that people all over the world would take their cue from there and treat their Jewish fellow-citizens outrageously by taking violent measures against their synagogues and their ancestral customs. (48) The Jews, however, were not going to remain quiet at all costs — even though they are by nature a peaceful people — not only since, as is the case with all humankind, the struggle to maintain one’s own traditions overrules the dangers to one’s own life, but also since they were the only people under the sun who by being deprived of their synagogues would at the same time be deprived of their means of showing their piety towards their benefactors, which is something they would have regarded as worth dying for many thousands of deaths. They no longer would have sacred precincts in which they could declare their thankfulness, and they might have said to their opponents: (49) “It apparently escaped your notice that in this way you did not pay homage to our masters but actually deprived them of it! You do not realize that for the Jews all over the world it is their synagogues that clearly form the basis for their piety towards the imperial family. If these are destroyed, what other place or method is left to us for paying this homage? (50) For if we neglect it when our ancestral customs permit us to do it, we deservedly receive the severest punishment for not giving the proper and full return for the benefits we received. But if we refuse because it is not permitted by our own laws, which Augustus himself was pleased to confirm, I do not know what kind of offence, small or great, we have committed, unless someone would want to take us to task for committing a transgression, albeit involuntarily, by not guarding against deviations from our ancestral customs, which, even if they are started by others, often end up affecting those who are <not> responsible2 for them.” (51) But by leaving unsaid what he should have said and by saying what he should have left unsaid, Flaccus sinned against us in that way. But what motives had those whose favor he was seeking? Did they really want to honor the Emperor? Were temples scarce in the city? Have not the greatest and most important parts of the city been consecrated to gods, ready for the erection of any statues they wished? 2 Here I adopt the reading tou;" <mh; > aijtivou". See the note ad locum in the commentary.

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(52) On the contrary, what we have been talking about is the aggressive deed of persons who love to make enemies and are plotters who seek to injure us so craftily that it would seem that our attackers were not acting unjustly, whereas for us, the attacked, it was not safe to oppose them. For, gentlemen, abrogating the laws and disrupting the ancestral customs of a people, outraging fellow-citizens and teaching the inhabitants of other cities to disregard unanimity, all that cannot be seen as a matter of honor(ing the Emperor).” §§53-96 The Pogrom at its Height (53) His attack on our laws by means of a seizure of our synagogues, of which he had even the names removed, seemed to be succesful to him. For that reason he proceeded to another project, namely, the destruction of our political organization. His purpose in that enterprise was that, if the only things to which our life was anchored were cut away, that is, our ancestral customs and our participation in political rights, we might be exposed to the worst misfortunes without having any rope left to which we could cling to for safety. (54) For only a couple of days later he issued a decree in which he stigmatized us as foreigners and aliens and gave us no right to plead our cause but condemned us without trial. What could be a better promise of further tyrannical behavior than this? He himself became everything: accuser, enemy, witness, judge, and executioner. But he then added to the first two (crimes) a third one, namely, he gave permission to those who wanted to plunder the Jews, as at the sacking of a city. (55) Well, what do people do when they get this license? The city has five districts, named after the first letters of the alphabet as we used to write it. Two of the districts are called the Jewish quarters because the majority of the inhabitants are Jews. In the other quarters there are also quite a number of Jews, although scattered about. So, what did they do then? They expelled the Jews from four of the five quarters and drove them together into a very small corner of the one left. (56) Because of their great numbers they (the Jews) flooded the beaches, the dunghills and the tombs, deprived of all their belongings. The enemies, however, ran to the houses left empty and plundered them; they divided the booty among themselves as if it were war. Since no one hindered them, they broke into the workshops of

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the Jews, even though these were closed because of the mourning for Drusilla, and they brought out all they found there, which was quite a lot. They carried it to the middle of the marketplace, handling other people’s property as if it were their own. (57) The unemployment, which was the consequence of this, was an evil that was even more unbearable than the plundering. The financers had lost their capital and no one was permitted to practice his usual business, neither farmer, nor shipper, nor merchant, nor artisan. So, poverty was brought down on them from two sides: first they were robbed, because in one day they were stripped of all their property and lost all they had, and second they were no longer able to make a living from their regular jobs. (58) Unbearable though these things were, in comparison to later actions they were tolerable. For although poverty is grievous, especially when it is brought about by one’s enemies, yet it is less grievous than even the slightest physical injury. (59) But if someone called the excessive sufferings that our people underwent ‘“injury” or “outrage,” he would not be using these words in their proper sense. I think he would be at a loss to find adequate terms in view of the enormous scale of this unprecedented cruelty. For the treatment of prisoners of war by their victors — who are usually and naturally implacable to their prisoners — would, in comparison to what happened here, seem to be kindness itself. (60) Victors do seize property and take large numbers of people prisoner, but they run the risk of losing their own if they are defeated. And it cannot be denied that they release innumerable prisoners of war for whom relatives or friends have paid a ransom, perhaps not because they yield to mercy but because they cannot resist their love of money. So what?, one might say; the way they are saved does not matter to those who are fortunate. (61) Apart from that, it is also the case that enemies fallen in war are deemed worthy of burial. Decent and humane (victors) do that at their expense, those whose hatred extends even to corpses surrender the bodies under a truce so that they will not be denied the final gift, the customary ceremonies (of a funeral). (62) That is what enemies do in war. But let us now have a look at what is done in peace by those who were our friends a little while ago. After the plunderings, the evictions and the violent expulsions from most quarters of the city, they (the Jews) were like a beleaguered garrison surrounded by enemies. They were oppressed by a terrible scarcity and even lack of necessary things and they saw their

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wives and little children dying before their eyes through a famine organized by men. (63) For in every other place all else was full of prosperity and abundance — the river had richly flooded the fields with its inundations and the wheatbearing area of the lowlands was producing grain in unstinted abundance thanks to its fertility. (64) When, finally, they could no longer endure their privation, some of them, quite contrary to what they had been used to, went to the houses of their relatives and friends to beg for the basic necessities of life, as a loan. Others, whose consciousness of their standing meant they could not endure the condition of beggars, which they saw as fitter for slaves than for the free, went to the market-place for no other reason than to buy food for their relatives and themselves, poor wretches! (65) For they were immediately seized by those who wielded the weapon of mob-rule and they were treacherously murdered; being dragged along and trampled upon through the whole city they were so completely annihilated that not even one piece was left to be buried. (66) Innumerable others, too, were overpowered and annihilated by manifold forms of maltreatment invented to gratify the atrocious cruelty of those who, maddened by bloodthirstiness, were transformed into wild animals. For they stoned any Jews they happened to catch sight of, or beat them to death with clubs, not immediately delivering blows to the vital parts in order to prevent that, by dying too soon, they might escape too soon from the awareness of their sufferings. (67) Some people became even more outrageous because of the immunity and license with which they could commit these catastrophic crimes. They discarded all blunt weapons and took up the most effective of all, fire and iron; and consequently they killed many with swords and not a few were exterminated by fire. (68) On top of all that the most merciless of all burnt even whole families, husbands with their wives, infant children with their parents, and that in the centre of the city, without any compassion for old age nor for youth nor for the innocent age of childhood. And when they were in want of timber for fire, they would collect brushwood and killed them more by suffocation than by fire, thus contriving a more pitiable and protracted death for these miserable people whose halfburnt bodies lay pell-mell, a grievous and absolutely heart-rending spectacle. (69) If the persons who were called to collect brushwood were too slow, they would burn the owners using their own furniture taken from the spoil, thus robbing them first of their most costly articles and then setting on fire anything that was not very useful to

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serve instead as timber. (70) Many also they bound by one foot at the ankle and dragged them around while still alive, meanwhile leaping on them and crushing them to pieces, thus devising the most cruel form of death. (71) Even when they were dead, the endless fury of their enemies did not come to an end; they inflicted still worse outrages on their dead bodies. They dragged these through — I would almost say — every lane of the city until the corpses had lost their skin, their flesh and muscles because these had been pulverised by the unevenness and toughness of the ground and were totally destroyed because all the constituent parts of the organism had been separated and dispersed in all directions. (72) Those who committed these things acted as if they themselves were the victims, like actors in a mime. But the friends and relatives of the real victims, simply because they felt grief and compassion over the misfortunes of their relations, were led away, scourged, tortured on the wheel, and after all these outrages, which were all their bodies could endure, the final punishment that awaited them was crucifixion. (73) After he had broken into everything as a real burglar and had let no part of the Jewish community escape his exorbitant hostility, Flaccus, this perpetrator of enormities, this inventor of ever new acts of villainy, devised a monstrous and unparallelled attack. (74) Our council of elders had been appointed to manage Jewish affairs, after the death of the genarch, by our savior and benefactor Augustus, orders to that effect having been given to Magius Maximus just before the latter began to govern the city on Egypt’s border and the country.3 Of this council of elders, Flaccus arrested 38 members, namely those who had been discovered in their own houses, and had them immediately put in bonds. Then he organized a fine procession, in which he marched these old men through the middle of the market place, their hands bound behind their backs, some with straps, others with iron chains, and took them into the theatre. It was a most miserable spectacle that was wholly unsuited to the occasion. (75) When they stood in front of their enemies, who were seated there, to make their disgrace even more conspicuous he ordered them all to be stripped and lacerated with scourges, an insulting form of treatment usually reserved for the worst criminals. As a result of 3 This translation is based upon the reading mevllonta povlin ajp∆ Aijguvptou kai; th;n cwvran ejpitropeuvein. See the note ad locum in the commentary.

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the flogging some of them died the moment they were carried away, whereas others were ill for such a long time that they despaired of ever recovering. (76) The enormity of his aggression has been fully proved by other evidence, but nonetheless it will be demonstrated even more clearly by what I am now going to tell. Three members of the council of elders, Euodus, Tryphon and Andron, were dispossessed of all their property as they were robbed at one swoop of all they had in their houses. Flaccus was well aware of what they had gone through, for he had been clearly told so when on an earlier occasion he sent for our rulers under the pretence of arranging a reconciliation between them and the rest of the city. (77) Nevertheless, even though he knew quite well that these men had been deprived of their property, he had them beaten in front of their plunderers. So, whereas they suffered the double misery of poverty and personal outrage, the others enjoyed the double pleasure of wealth that did not belong to them while sating themselves, gloating on the disgrace of those from whom they had stolen that wealth. (78) Now I have to tell something that also took place at that time, though I hesitate to do so, since I am afraid that, in case it will be considered as trivial, it may detract from the magnitude of such enormities. But even though it is a small thing in itself, yet it is evidence of no small malignity. There are different kinds of scourges used in the city, and these differences are related to the status of the persons to be beaten. So, for instance, the practice is that Egyptians are beaten with a different kind of scourge and by different people than the Alexandrians, who are beaten with flat blades and by Alexandrian blade-bearers. (79) This custom was also observed, in the case of our people, by both Flaccus’ predecessors and himself in his first years of office. For it is possible, it is really possible, to find some small element in the circumstances of degradation for persons to maintain their dignity, even in a situation of outrage, something that contributes to decorum, if one allows the nature of the case to be examined on its own merits, without the import of personal aggressive passion which removes and disperses all ingredients of a milder approach. (80) It was, therefore, unbearable that, although Alexandrian Jewish commoners had always been beaten with scourges that more befitted freemen and citizens even when they were thought to have committed things worthy of stripes, now their rulers, the members of the council of elders, whose very title implies age and

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honor, were in this respect treated with a greater lack of dignity than their inferiors, as if they were Egyptians of the lowest status and guilty of the greatest crimes. (81) I pass over the fact that, even if they had committed numerous crimes, he ought to have postponed their punishment out of respect for the occasion. For those rulers who administrate their states in the proper way and, instead of only pretending to honor, truly honor their benefactors, are accustomed not to punish any of the condemned until the [illustrious] celebrations in honor of the birthdays of the illustrious Augusti are over. (82) But he committed this violation of the law on those very days and had punishment inflicted upon those who had done nothing wrong, even though, if he had wished so, he could have punished them afterwards. But he hurried and pressed on the matter in order to please the mob that was inimical to the Jews, convinced that in this way he could more easily win them over to what he had in mind. (83) I actually know of instances of people who had been crucified and who, on the moment that such a holiday was at hand, were taken down from the cross and given back to their relatives in order to give them a burial and the customary rites of the last honors. For it was (thought to be) proper that even the dead should enjoy something good on the emperor’s birthday and at the same time that the sanctity of the festival should be preserved. (84) Flaccus, however, did not order to take down people who had died on the cross but to crucify living ones, people for whom the occasion offered amnesty, to be sure only a short-lived not a permanent one, but at least a short postponement of punishment if not entire forgiveness. And he did this after they had been maltreated with scourges in the middle of the theatre and tortured with fire and the sword. (85) The spectacle was divided into acts. The first shows, that lasted from dawn till the third or fourth hour, were as follows: Jews were scourged, hung up, tortured on the wheel, maltreated, and led away to their death through the middle of the orchestra. The shows after this fine exhibition included dancers, mimes, flute players, and all the other forms of amusement in theatrical competitions. (86) But why dwell on these things, for he was already scheming a second round of plundering. What he also wanted was to deploy the whole army as a stronghold against us and for that reason he invented a strange calumny to the effect that the Jews had heavy suits of armour in their houses. So, he summoned a centurion in whom he

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had the greatest confidence, a man called Castus, and ordered him to take the bravest soldiers of the contingent under his command and without losing time or giving previous notice to enter and search the houses of the Jews to check whether there was any store of arms laid up there. (87) The man hastened to carry out what he had been ordered to do. But the Jews were unaware of this scheme and at first they stood dumbfounded in bewilderment, while their wives and children were clinging to them and bathed in tears for fear of being taken captive. For they were in continuous expectation of what would be only the completion of the plundering. (88) When they heard one of the investigators saying, “Where do you store your weapons?”, they breathed a sigh of some relief, and they displayed everything, even what they had in their recesses. (89) They were partly pleased and partly aggrieved; pleased because the calumny would now be evidently refuted, but angry because, firstly, such serious slanders, which were concocted against them by their enemies, were believed beforehand, and secondly, because their women, who were always kept in seclusion and did not even appear at the house-door, and their unmarried daughters, who were confined to the women’s quarter, women who for modesty’s sake shunned the eyes of men, even their closest relatives, now became exposed to people who were not just unfamiliar men but terrifying soldiers at that. (90) And after this careful investigation, what a great quantity of defensive weapons was found! Helmets, breastplates, shields, daggers, pikes, complete outfits of armour were brought out and piled up in heaps, and thereafter offensive weapons, javelins, slings, bows, and arrows? Of course not, absolutely nothing of this kind was found! Not even knives which the cooks use for their daily work. (91) This fact, in itself, revealed the simplicity of the kind of life led by people who do not admit extravagance and luxury, things which by their very nature engender satiety; and satiety engenders insolence, which is the source of all evil. (92) Yet, not long ago the arms of the Egyptians throughout the countryside had been collected by a man called Bassus, to whom Flaccus had entrusted this task. And on that occasion a large fleet of ships could be seen sailing down the Nile and anchoring in the harbors of the river, loaded with all kinds of weapons, and also innumerable beasts of burden loaded with spears tied together cross-wise and hanging on either side so as to keep the animals in balance. Also

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almost all the wagons from the army camp were full of armor suits, while they advanced in an orderly line in one arrangement and were visible in one view. And the total distance between the harbors and the armory in the palace, where the arms had to be deposited, was about ten stades. (93) It was the right thing to search the houses of those who had procured all this, for after frequently having participated in revolts they were suspected again of revolutionary activities. In imitation of the religious games the authorities should have instituted a new biennial festival for the collection of arms in Egypt, so that either the people would not have time to collect them, or at least only a few instead of many, because they would get no opportunity to replace them. (94) But we, why did we have to suffer this kind of thing? For when were we ever suspected of revolting? When were we not considered to be peaceful to all? Are not the pursuits of our everyday life irreproachable and do they not contribute to the law and order and the stability of the city? If the Jews indeed had arms in their possession, would they then have let themselves be stripped of and driven away from more than 400 houses, expelled by those who had robbed them of all their properties? Why then was no search done of the property of these people too, for they would have weapons, if not of their own, at any rate all the ones they had stolen from others! (95) But, as I said, the whole affair was nothing else than a deliberate plot, due to the ruthlessness of Flaccus and of the crowds, of which even women became the victims. For they were seized like captives not only in the market place but also in the middle of the theatre, where they were dragged upon the stage on any calumnious charge whatsoever, in an intolerably and painfully insulting way. (96) When then they turned out to belong to another nation — for they arrested many women as Jewesses since they did not make any careful investigation of the truth — they were set free. But when they were found to belong to our nation, then these spectators turned into despotic tyrants and ordered swine’s flesh so as to give it to these women. All who, for fear of punishment, ate from the meat were released without undergoing any further maltreatment. But the more resolute women were handed over to the torturers to suffer unbearable tortures, and this is the clearest proof that they were absolutely innocent.

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§§97-103 The Declaration of Loyalty (97) In addition to what has already been said, Flaccus was planning and trying to harm us not only on his own accord but, from the outset, with the emperor being involved as well. For we had decreed by our votes and carried out by our actions all possible honors to Gaius as far as they were allowed by our laws, and we delivered the decree to Flaccus, begging him that it might be forwarded by him, since he would not have granted our request for an embassy. (98) He read the decree and nodded his head many times in approval at each point. He smiled and was delighted, or at least he pretended to be pleased, and said: “I appreciate all of you for your piety and I will forward it, as you request, or else I will play the role of your ambassador myself so that Gaius may learn about your gratitude. (99) I will also give testimony myself to all the many things I know about your orderly and obedient behavior, and I need not add anything to that, for the simple truth about you is the most sufficient praise.” (100) We were delighted at these promises and gave him thanks, as if our hope had already been fulfilled that Gaius had read the decree. And this was a reasonable hope, for everything that is forwarded with urgency through the governors is usually read immediately by the ruler.4 (101) Flaccus, however, disregarded all our intentions and also his own words and promises, and he retained the decree in his possession, so that we alone of all people under the sun would be considered enemies (of the emperor). There can be no doubt that these were the actions of a man who had been brooding for many nights over the preparations for his attack against us, not of a man who acts upon a sudden attack of insanity, on an unseasonable fit of mental derangement. (102) God, however, apparently takes care of human affairs for he countered his flattering words, so elegantly phrased for the sole purpose of cheating everyone, and the counsels of his lawless mind in which he devised his treacherous stratagems (against us). God took mercy on us and saw to it that not long thereafter we had good reason to think that our hopes were not lost. 4 The translation is based upon the reading ajnupevrqeton e[cei th;n par∆ hJgemovni diavgnwsin. See the discussion in the commentary.

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(103) For when king Agrippa visited us, we informed him of Flaccus’ intrigues, whereupon he intervened to rectify the matter. He promised us that he would forward the decree to the emperor — which, as we later heard, is what he did indeed — with apologies for the delay, showing that we were not slow at all in understanding the duty of piety towards our benefactor and his family; that, on the contrary, we had been zealous in this respect from the very beginning, but that we had been deprived of the opportunity to demonstrate this zeal in time due to the governor’s maliciousness. §§104-118 Flaccus’ Arrest (104) For it was at this juncture that Justice, the champion and defender of the wronged, the punisher of unholy deeds and men, began to prepare for the battle against him. To begin with, he underwent an unprecedented humiliation and a disaster such as had not befallen any of the former governors since the house of Augustus acquired the dominion over land and sea. (105) To be true, also some of those who had held governorships during the reigns of Tiberius and his father Caesar, had perverted their office of administrator and protector into despotism and tyranny. They had done their territories irreparable damage by bribery, plunder, unjust condemnations, banishment and exile of completely innocent people, and execution of the powerful without trial. But when, after their term of office, these men returned to Rome, the emperors always demanded a rendering of their accounts and an examination of their conduct, especially when the cities that had been oppressed sent an embassy. (106) On those occasions the emperors showed themselves impartial judges. They listened equally to the accusers and the defendants, and they made it a principle not to condemn anyone in advance without a fair trial. They decided what appeared to be just, not being influenced by hostility or favor but by the objective truth. (107) But in Flaccus’ case it was not after his term of office but before the regular date that he was met by Justice, who hates evil, because she was so indignant at the unimaginable excesses of his unjust and lawless activities. (108) The way he was arrested was as follows. He supposed that, as regards the matters on which he was under suspicion, Gaius had by now been propitiated, partly by means of his letters which were full of flattery, partly by his long public speeches in which he often used obsequious language and strung together long series of insincere

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laudations, partly also by the high reputation he had in the largest part of the city. (109) What he did not realize, however, was that he was fooling himself. (The hopes of wicked people do not have any foundations: they count on what is favorable to them, but what they experience is the opposite, namely what they deserve!) For Gaius sent from Italy a centurion appointed by him, named Bassus, with the company of soldiers which stood under his command. (110) This man embarked on one of the fastest sailing ships and in only a few days he arrived at the harbor of Alexandria, off the island of Pharos, late in the afternoon. He then ordered the captain to remain offshore until after sunset. He planned to enter unnoticed so as to avoid Flaccus getting wind of his arrival beforehand and planning some violent action that could frustrate Bassus’ mission. (111) When it became evening, the ship entered and moored. Bassus disembarked with his men and went into the city neither recognizing nor being recognized by anyone. But when on the way he found a soldier who was one of the sentries in the quaternion on duty, he ordered him to point out to him the house of his commander. For to that person he did want to communicate his secret errand so that he would have someone to assist him in case he needed a strong force. (112) When he heard that both the commander and Flaccus were having a dinner party with someone, he hastened with unabated speed to the house of the host — it was a certain Stephanio, one of the freedmen of the emperor Tiberius, at whose house they were the guests. Bassus held back out of sight a little way off and sent one of his own men to reconnoitre — the man was dressed like a servant: a trick to prevent anyone from noticing what was going on. Disguised as the slave of one or other of the guests, he entered the dining room and took a close and careful look at the whole situation. Then he went back and informed Bassus. (113) Bassus thus got to know that the entrances were unguarded and that Flaccus had only a small number of people with him, for only some ten to fifteen of his household slaves accompanied him. Then he gave the signal to his soldiers and rushed in suddenly. Some of the soldiers took position in the dining room, with swords in their girdles, and they surrounded Flaccus before he even noticed, as he was just drinking to the health of someone and toasting the company. (114) But when Bassus came forward and took his stand in the middle of the room, the moment Flaccus saw him he was speechless

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from consternation. He wanted to get up, but when he saw the circle of guards around him, he knew — even before someone told him — what Gaius wanted to do with him; what orders had been given to those who had just arrived, and what he was about to undergo in the near future. For the human mind has an impressive ability to see in one glance and to hear altogether the various successive events that are going to take place over a long period. (115) All his fellow-guests rose, shuddering and rigid with fear lest some sentence had already been fixed for the sheer fact of having been at the same party as the culprit. For it was not safe to flee, nor was it possible, because all entrances had already been blocked. Flaccus was led away by the soldiers at Bassus’ command, thus returning from a party for the last time. For it had to be so that a hospitable hearth was the scene where Justice began to act against a man who had destroyed numerous hearths and homes of completely innocent people. (116) The fact that Flaccus had to undergo this unprecedented misfortune, taken captive as he was like an enemy in the country of which he was the governor, was I think due to his treatment of the Jews, whom he had decided to exterminate completely in his craving for fame. The moment of his arrest is also a clear proof of this, for it was the national Jewish festival of the autumn equinox, in which it is the custom of the Jews to live in tents. (117) But none of the festal proceedings were carried out because our leaders were still imprisoned, after having endured irremediable and intolerable atrocities and insults. In addition, the common people regarded the misfortune of their leaders as that of the whole nation, and they were already extremely depressed by the exceptional misery that had befallen each of them individually. (118) Grief is usually felt twice as strongly especially at festivals when people are not in a position to celebrate them, both because they are deprived of the lighthearted cheerfulness which a festival requires, and because they have their share of sorrow, which in this case broke their backs since they were unable to find any remedy for disasters of such a scale. §§119-124 Gratitude for Flaccus’ Arrest (119) While they were in this extremely sad situation, oppressed by an unbearable burden and crowded in their houses as night had fallen, some people came to tell them that Flaccus had just been

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arrested. They thought that this was a trap, not the truth at all, and thinking that they were being mocked and ambushed again, their grief became even greater. (120) But when tumult arose throughout the city and the nightguards ran to and fro and horsemen rode at full speed to and from the camp in great haste, some of the Jews, aroused by the unusual events, came out of their houses to get information about what was going on. For it seemed clear that something revolutionary had taken place. (121) When they heard that Flaccus had been arrested and was already ensnared within the hunter’s nets, they stretched out their arms to heaven and began to sing hymns and songs to God who oversees all human affairs. They said, “O Lord, we are not delighted at the punishment of our enemy, for we have learned from our holy laws that we should sympathize with our fellow humans. But it is right to give thanks to you for having taken pity and compassion on us and for having relieved our constant and incessant oppression.” (122) When they had spent all night singing hymns and other songs, at daybreak they poured out through the gates and made their way to the nearby parts of the beach, for they had been deprived of their synagogues. And there, standing in the purest possible place they cried out with one accord: (123) “O almighty King of mortals and immortals, we have come here to call on earth and sea, on air and heaven, which are the parts of the universe, and on the universe as a whole, to offer thanks to you. In these alone we can dwell, expelled as we are from all humanmade buildings, deprived of the city and the public and private areas within its walls, the only people under the sun to become cityless and homeless because of the malice of their governor. (124) But you make us realize that we may be confident that what is still in need of restoration will indeed be restored, because you have already begun to answer our prayers. After all, you have suddenly brought down the common enemy of our nation, who was the instigator of our misfortunes, who thought so highly of himself and expected that these things would bring him fame. And when you did so, you did not wait until he was already far away so that those who had suffered badly under him would only have learned about it by hearsay and hence have less satisfaction, no, you did so right here, so close by that it was almost before the very eyes of those whom he had wronged. Thus you gave them a clearer picture of your swift and unexpected intervention.”

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§§125-145 Lampo and Isidorus (125) To what I have already said I should add a third thing which I think also took place because divine providence intervened. Flaccus had set sail at the beginning of the winter, for he was destined to have his fill of the frightening dangers of the sea as well, having filled the elements of the universe with his impieties. After having endured innumerable hardships and barely having arrived safely in Italy, he was immediately confronted with the fact that two of his worst enemies, Isidorus and Lampo, took up the charges against him. (126) These men had been his subjects only a short while ago and had hailed him as their master, benefactor, savior and the like. Now, however, they were his adversaries and as such they displayed a power that was not a mere match but in many ways vastly superior to his own. They not only had confidence in the justice of their case, but — which was of the utmost importance — they also saw that he who presides over human affairs was his implacable enemy, he who was now about to put on the cloak of justice, albeit out of calculation, namely in order to avoid the impression that he had condemned him in advance without a trial. But in fact he would behave like an enemy who, before hearing either accusation or defense, had already in his heart condemned him and sentenced him to the severest punishment. (127) And nothing is harder for those who were once superiors than to be accused by their former inferiors or for those who were once rulers by their former subjects, which is just as if masters were to be accused by slaves born in their house or purchased with their money. (128) Yet in my opinion this was a lighter evil compared with another one which was to be still greater. For it was not just people who had been in the position of subjects who now suddenly attacked him unanimously with their accusations, having prepared themselves for the fight, but also people who had been his most bitter enemies for the greatest part of the period that he had been the governor of the country. Lampo had been put on trial for impiety towards the emperor Tiberius and, as the trial had dragged on for two years, he was exhausted. (129) Because his judge had a grudge against him, he caused postponements and delays on various pretexts because, even if Lampo was to escape from the charge, he wanted to make his life more painful than death by keeping him in uncertainty and fear about his future for as long as possible.

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(130) Later, when it seemed that he had won his case, Lampo alleged that he had been dealt with in an outrageous way as far as his property was concerned, for he had been compelled to become a gymnasiarch. It may have been so that he was stingy and thrifty and just asserted by way of excuse that he simply did not possess enough means for such great expenses; it may also have been the case that he really did not have the means. Anyway, before the trial he had pretended to be quite rich, but on closer examination he appeared not to be a very wealthy man at all, having acquired practically all he had from his illegal actions. (131) For he used to stand by the governors whenever they gave judgment and he took minutes of all that took place during the trial, because he had the rank of an introducer.5 And then he would deliberately expunge or omit some things or insert other things which had not been said; sometimes he doctored the documents by changing, rearranging, or even totally rewriting them, the purpose of this tamperer being to charge money for every syllable, or even worse, every stroke of his pen. (132) Often the whole people unanimously denounced him, with an accurate and well-chosen expression, as “the pen-murderer,” because by the things he wrote he had caused the death of numerous people and had made the lives of as many more miserable than those of the dead: those might have won their case and enjoyed their prosperity, but what they suffered was a most undeserved defeat and poverty, because their enemies had bought both of these from this man who peddled and sold the property of others. (133) For it was impossible that the governors, who were in charge of such a vast country, could remember all the cases in that constant stream of both private and public new affairs, especially as they had not only to administer justice but also received the calculations of the revenues and taxes, the scrutiny of which took up the greater part of the year. (134) But Lampo, who was commissioned to guard the most important archives, those of justice and the most sacred verdicts based upon it, made misuse of the forgetfulness of the judges for his own profit. He registered people who should have won their case among the defeated and those who should have lost it among the winners after first having received his accursed fee, more properly described as hire, from the victorious. 5 This translation is based upon the emendation eijsagwgevw" e[cwn tavxin. See the notes in the commentary ad locum.

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(135) Such was the Lampo who now appeared as one of the accusers of Flaccus. Further there was Isidorus, his equal in wickedness, a mobbish type of demagogue, always intent on creating chaos and confusion, an enemy of peace and stability, very adept at organizing riots and tumults where they did not yet exist and, once they were there, at coaching and fomenting them, always taking care to keep around him a disorderly and turbulent gang consisting of a promiscuous mob of all the refuse of the people, which he had divided up into sections as if they were a sort of squadrons. (136) In the city there are clubs with many members whose common ideal is not something sound but only to drink liquor, be drunk, behave as a drunkard, and the offspring of these, insolence. The natives call these gatherings “synods” and “couches.” (137) In all or most of these clubs Isidorus holds the first place, and for that reason he is called “symposiarch,” table president, city-troublemaker. Then when he wants to perpetrate something useless, a single call suffices to bring all of them together and to have them say and do whatever they are told. (138) On one occasion he was angry with Flaccus because, whereas at first he had the reputation of being a person with some influence on him, afterwards he no longer had that favorable position. Then he hired the scum of humanity, those who used to be vociferant and to sell their shouts as in a market to persons who are disposed to buy them, and he ordered them to assemble at the gymnasium. (139) When the building was full, they began to accuse Flaccus for no reason at all, inventing groundless charges and stringing together falsehoods spun out in anapaests, so that not only Flaccus but also the others were astonished at the unexpected event. They surmised — rightly so — that there must definitely be someone whom they were trying to please, since they themselves had not suffered anything unjust, neither had the rest of the city’s inhabitants, as they knew quite well. (140) Then, after deliberation, they decided to arrest some of them in order to try to find out the cause of this sudden outburst of blind fury and madness. The ones who were arrested confessed the truth without having to be put to torture, and they provided the proofs through facts: the payment that had been agreed upon, that is, both the part that had already been given to them and the part that would be given them later according to promises, the names of the men who had been appointed to distribute the money as the

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leaders of the sedition, and the place and the time at which the bribery had taken place. (141) Of course, everyone was indignant and the inhabitants of the city found it unbearable that its reputation should be blemished by the stupidity of some individuals. For that reason Flaccus decided to summon the most respectable of the citizens and to bring before them on the next day the distributers of the payment, so as to convict Isidorus and defend his own administration by proving that he had been unjustly slandered. When they heard the summons, not only the magistrates came, but the whole city, except that part of the population that was about to be convicted of having received bribes. (142) Those who had discharged this fine service were raised on a platform so that in this conspicuous elevation they might be recognized by all. They accused Isidorus of being behind the disturbances and the slanders against Flaccus and of having given both money and wine to no small number on his account. (143) ”For where could we have got such great abundance from?” they said, “We are poor and hardly able to provide ourselves daily with the very necessaries of life. And what kind of terrible evil did we suffer from the governor so as to be forced to cherish a grudge against him? No, the originator and creator of all these things is that man, always envious of the prosperous and an enemy of law and order.” (144) When the bystanders heard this and recognized that what was being said was a clear representation and indication of the intentions of the accused, some shouted “Disfranchise him!”, others “Banish him!”, again others “Kill him!” These last were in the majority, and then the rest too came over and joined them, so that finally all cried out unanimously and with one voice, “Kill the common pest, the man who, ever since he came to the fore and wormed his way into state affairs, caused the whole city to become diseased!” (145) Because of his bad conscience, Isidorus ran off, fearing arrest. But Flaccus took no further steps against Isidorus, thinking that, now that he had voluntarily left, life in the city would be free from sedition and intrigue. §§146-161 Flaccus on Trial (146) I have dwelled at length on these events, not in order to keep old injuries in memory but out of admiration for Justice, who oversees human affairs. For those who had been hostile to him from the beginning and to whom he had become more hateful than

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anyone else, were the ones to whom was allotted the role of accusing him so as to make his affliction as great as possible. For to be accused is already bad enough, but being accused by confessed enemies is far worse. (147) He, the ruler, was accused by his subjects, and that by men who had always been his enemies, whereas only a little before he had been the master of the life of each of the two. But that was not all, he also received a very tough verdict. He actually received a twofold blow in that his defeat went hand in hand with ridicule by his exulting enemies. To sensible people this is even worse than death. (148) After that he reaped a rich harvest of misery. For he was immediately deprived of all his possessions, both what he had inherited from his parents and what he had acquired himself. He was a man who took special delight in beautiful things. Unlike some rich men, for him wealth was not inert matter, but everything had been scrutinized with a view to its extravagance: cups, garments, couches, utensils, and everything else that decorated his house, all of it was first class. (149) Aside from that, there was his staff of household slaves, carefully selected on the basis of their excellence, both with regard to the beauty and health condition of their bodies and to the perfect way in which they performed their services. Every one of them performed his tasks exceptionally well, so that they were looked upon as either the best among those who performed the same functions or as absolutely second to none. (150) A clear proof of all this is the fact that, while a great number of properties belonging to condemned persons were sold by public auction, that of Flaccus alone was reserved for the emperor, except a few items so as to avoid transgression of the law enacted about persons convicted on these grounds. (151) After the confiscation of his property he was sentenced to deportation. He was banished from the whole mainland — that is, the greater and better part of the habitable world — and from every island on which people can prosper. For he would have been exiled to the most miserable of all the islands in the Aegaean Sea, called Gyara, had Lepidus not interceded. Thanks to him he could exchange Gyara for nearby Andros. (152) Then he had to travel again from Rome to Brindisium, the same journey he had also made a few years before when he had been appointed governor of Egypt and adjacent Libya. Consequently, the cities which then saw him so full of pride and making a show of the grandeur of his good fortune, would now see him again, but this time in complete dishonor. (153) Pointed at with the finger and insulted though he was, he felt

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oppressed by even heavier afflictions caused by the total reversal of his fortune, for his misery was constantly being renewed and rekindled by additions of fresh evils which, as in the case of recurring diseases,6 forcibly bring back the memories of former disasters which in the meantime seemed to have been dimmed. (154) After he had crossed the Ionian Gulf he sailed upon the sea which extends to Corinth, a spectacle to all the Peloponnesian coastal cities when they heard of the sudden reversal of his fortune. For whenever he disembarked, the people crowded, the ill-disposed out of malice, but others, who are usually sobered by what happens to other people, out of sympathy. (155) From Lechaion he crossed the Isthmus to the opposite sea and arrived at Cenchraeae, the port of Corinth. There his guards, who did not permit him the smallest respite, forced him to embark immediately upon a small merchant vessel and put to sea. And since a strong contrary wind was rushing down, he suffered greatly and only with great difficulty did he arrive storm-tossed at the Piraeus. (156) When the storm had ceased, he coasted along Attica as far as Cape Sounion and then continued along the series of islands there, Helena, Kia, Kythnos, and all the others that lie in a row one after the other, until at last he came to his destination, the island of the Andrians. (157) When he saw it from afar, the wretch cried so uncontrollably that his tears seemed to come from a fountain. Beating his breast and lamenting bitterly, he said: “My guards and escorts, look what a fine piece of land this Andros is, an unhappy island that I exchange for happy Italy! (158) I, Flaccus, was born and brought up and educated in imperial Rome, where I was the schoolmate and companion of the grandchildren of Augustus and chosen by Tiberius Caesar as one of his intimate friends, and entrusted for six years with the greatest of all his possessions, Egypt. (159) Why this enormous change of fortune? As if an eclipse has occurred, during the day night has overtaken my life! This little island, what shall I call it? ‘My place of banishment’ or ‘my new fatherland,’ ‘a safe haven’ or ‘a miserable place of refuge’? No, ‘tomb’ would be its most appropriate name! For in a sense, wretch that I am, I am being sent to bear my own corpse as it were to a tomb. For either because of my sufferings I will make an end to my miserable life or, if I would be able to live on, I will die a drawn-out death in full consciousness.” 6

Reading uJpotropiazouvsai". See the commentary ad locum.

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(160) Thus he was lamenting. When the ship had moored in the harbor, he disembarked while he wholly stooped down to the ground as people do who are pressed down by a very heavy burden, his neck heavily laden with his misfortunes. He did not even have the energy to lift up his head, or he did not dare it because of the people who had come to meet him and had lined up on either side of the road in order to see him. (161) His escorts led him to the assembly of the people of Andros and showed him there to everyone, thus making them witnesses of the arrival of the exile in their island. And then, having fulfilled their service, they departed. §§162-180a Flaccus at Andros (162) But Flaccus, no longer seeing any familiar sight, felt his suffering renewed as it became more poignant by ever more vivid imaginings. Looking at the sheer desolation around him, in the middle of which he had come to a halt, it seemed to him that a violent death in his native country would have been a lesser evil, or rather a welcome solution, as compared to his present circumstances. He made such spastic movements that it was impossible to see any difference with a lunatic. He ran around, frequently jumping up and down, clapping his hands, smiting his thighs, flinging himself on the ground, while he shouted: (163) “I am Flaccus, who until recently was the governor of the great city, or rather multi-city, Alexandria, and the ruler of the most blessed land of Egypt! I am the one to whom innumerable of its inhabitants turned, the one who commanded great forces of infantry, cavalry, and navy, an army that excelled not only in numbers but also in quality. I am the one who was escorted day after day by numerous people when I went out. (164) But was all this just an illusion, not reality at all? Was it only when I slept that I saw in my dreams that former happiness, images disappearing into a void, figments of a soul which perhaps depicted non-existing things as reality? (165) Yes, I have completely deceived myself! After all these were but a shadow of realities, not the realities themselves, an imitation of clear perception, not clear perception itself which unmasks falsehood. For just as when we wake up we find nothing of the things that appear to us in our dreams — all have flown away together — so too all that brilliance which I formerly enjoyed has been extinguished in one very short moment.” (166) These kind of thoughts kept him constantly in their grip and, so to speak, broke his back. He avoided going to places where

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he would meet many people because of his haunting shame, so he neither went down to the harbor nor did he dare to visit the marketplace, but he lurked in his house where he had locked up himself, for he did not even have the courage to cross the threshhold. (167) Sometimes, however, early in the morning when all the others were still in their beds, he would go outside the city wall without showing himself to anyone at all, and he would spend the day in loneliness. He would then turn aside if someone was about to meet him, so tormented and devoured was his soul by the fresh memories of his misfortunes, poor wretch. He would come back only in the middle of the night, praying in his endless and boundless sorrow that the evening would become morning again because of his fear of the darkness and the weird visions he had when he happened to fall asleep; but in the morning he prayed that it would be evening again, for the darkness that surrounded him was opposed to everything bright. (168) A few months later he bought a small piece of land where he spent much of his time in solitude, bewailing his own fate with many tears. (169) There is a story that once about midnight he became inspired, like in the Corybantic rites, and came out of his farm-house. He then turned his eyes towards heaven and the stars and, seeing that which is really a cosmos within the cosmos, he cried out: (170) “King of gods and men, it is now clear that you are not indifferent to the nation of the Jews, nor is what they assert about your providence false, for all who deny that the Jews have you for a champion and defender go astray from sound opinion. I am a clear proof of this, for all the mad acts that I have committed against the Jews I have now suffered myself. (171) When they were robbed of their possessions I closed my eyes and gave license to those who plundered them. For that reason I have myself been deprived of all I inherited from my father and my mother and of all that I received by way of favor and gift or that I acquired in other ways. (172) Once I cast on them the slur that they had no civic rights because they were foreigners, whereas in fact they were inhabitants possessing these rights. I did so in order to please their adversaries, a disorderly and unruly mob, by whose flattery I, miserable man that I am, was led astray. For that reason I was deprived of my civic rights, driven in exile from all the inhabited world, and shut up in this place. (173) I gave orders to bring some of them to the theatre and have them maltreated there before the eyes of their greatest enemies, unjustly so. Justly, therefore, I was marched not into only one theatre or just one city to undergo

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the worst maltreatment in my wretched soul rather than in my body, but I was paraded through all Italy as far as Brindisium, through all the Peloponnese as far as Corinth, and through Attica and the islands as far as Andros, my prison. (174) And I am deeply convinced that this is not the end of my misfortunes, but that there are others still in store for me to fill up the measure of compensation for what I have perpetrated. I put some to death and when they were killed by others I did not avenge them. Some were stoned, some while still alive were burnt to death or dragged through the middle of the market place till their bodies were wholly torn to pieces. (175) Because of all that I know that the goddesses of punishment await me and that these avenging spirits are already standing as it were at the finish and press forward eager for my blood. Every day, or rather every hour, I die beforehand by suffering many deaths, not only the last one.” (176) He often was so frightened that he panicked, and then the limbs and members of his body shivered and shuddered and his soul was atremble with fear and quivering with panting and palpitation, knowing that he had lost the only thing that can naturally comfort human life, hope of something good. (177) No favorable omen ever appeared to him. Everything seemed to bode ill, presaging sounds and voices were sinister, his wakeful hours were hard to bear, his sleep full of fear, his solitude as that of a beast. Was company of other people then what pleased him most? No, time spent in a city was most unpleasant to him. His solitary life in the countryside, although disgraceful, was it safe at least? No, it was dangerous and inexorable. Anyone who approached him quietly was to be suspected. (178) “He is plotting something against me,” he said, “since he is walking so fast. It does not seem that he is in a hurry for any other reason than pursuing me. The man with a smile is laying a snare for me. The frank man despises me. Food and drink are given to me as to beasts for slaughter. (179) How long can I endure so many misfortunes as if I am a man of steel? I know that I am losing courage in the face of death, due to the cruelty of a deity who does not permit me to break off abruptly my miserable life because he still has an abundance of irremediable evils in store for me, which he treasures up against me in order to do a favor to those whom I treacherously murdered.” (180a) Restlessly repeating this kind of thing he awaited his fated end and uninterrupted sorrows went on to disturb and confuse his soul.

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§§180b-190 Caligula Has Flaccus Killed But in the meantime Gaius, who was by nature ruthless and never satisfied with the revenge he had taken, did not — unlike others — leave alone those who had once been punished, because his hard feelings would never stop, and for that reason he continuously tried to find new and great disasters to inflict upon them. And Flaccus was a person he hated to such a degree that he even loathed his namesakes, so repulsive to him was the name of Flaccus. (181) He often regretted that he had condemned him to exile instead of death, and although he respected Lepidus, who had interceded, he also blamed him for it so that for fear of punishment the man stopped interceding. He was afraid, rightly so, that by helping to lighten the sentence of another, he himself would receive a heavier one. (182) Since nobody any longer had the courage to say anything to make him more lenient, Gaius now gave vent to his unsoftened and unbridled fury, which should have been mitigated with time but instead had become exacerbated, as is the case with diseases which, when they recur, are more severe than at previous times. (183) So they say that once, in a sleepless night, he was thinking of his officials in exile, who in theory were supposed to live unhappy lives but in practice lived without trouble and in tranquillity and freedom. (184) He even changed the designation from “exile” to “holidays abroad.” He said: “The banishment of such people is a sort of holiday abroad because all they need is there in abundance and they are able to live without trouble and in well-being. As a matter of fact it is absurd that they live in luxury and enjoy the advantages of the peaceful life of a philosopher!” (185) Thereupon he ordered that the most distinguished and those with the highest reputation should be put to death, giving a list of names which was headed by that of Flaccus. When the men who had been ordered to kill him arrived at Andros, Flaccus happened to arrive from the country at the city and they came from the harbor to meet him. They recognized each other from afar. (186) He then realized the purpose of their mission — for everyone’s soul is highly prophetic, especially of people in misfortune — and turned from the road, running away in flight over the rugged ground. Did he perhaps forget that Andros was an island, not the mainland, so that speed is of no use since the sea surrounds it? For one of two things was to happen necessarily: either he was to go too far and end up in the sea or he was to arrive at the very edge of the

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island and be arrested there. (187) Now, when two evils have to be compared, death on land is preferable to death in the sea, for nature assigned to men and all other terrestrials land as their most appropriate place, not only during their lifetime but also after death: the same element should receive them not only at the moment of their birth but also at their departure from life. (188) They pursued him without stopping to draw breath and caught him. Some of them at once started to dig a pit, the others dragged him along by force although he resisted and screamed and struggled, as a result of which he was wounded all over his body since he ran upon the blows, as wild beasts do. (189) He seized hold of his murderers and clung to them so that they were hindered to direct their swords at him directly and had to apply their blows obliquely, and so he caused himself to suffer more severely. Finally, he lay there, his hands, feet, head, breast, and sides gashed and smashed, ready as it were to be cut up like a sacrificial animal. For Justice wanted that single body to receive wounds as numerous as the number of the Jews who had been unlawfully murdered by him. (190) The whole place was running with blood that poured forth like a fountain from the many veins, which had been gashed one after the other. When the corpse was being dragged into the pit which had been dug, most of the parts fell asunder since the ligaments by which the whole of the body was kept together had been slit. §191 Epilogue (191) Such were the sufferings of Flaccus, too, who thus became an indubitable proof that the Jewish people had not been deprived of the help of God.

COMMENTARY The Title

On Flaccus: The title of Flacc. has been transmitted in a variety of forms. Our best ms., M, has Fivlwno" eij" Flavkkon (translated here); others have just eij" Flavkkon, or Flavkko" yegovmeno", or the more elaborate and pious (and therefore secondary) Fivlwno" iJstoriva pavnu wjfevlimo" kai; tw'/ bivw/ crhvsimo" ta; kata; to;n Flavkkon h[toi peri; pronoiva". Photius (Bibl. cod. 105) refers to the work as Flavkko" h] Flavkkwn yegovmeno" (Flavkkwn obviously being a mistake for Flavkko"), and Eusebius calls the treatise simply Flav k ko" (Chron. Tiberius 21; Jerome translates ‘in libro qui “Flaccus” inscribitur’). In the quotes from Flacc. in John of Damascus’ compilatory work (see Introd. ch. 7), the work is called ta; kata; Flavkkon or ta; pro;" Flavkkon. Note that there is no tradition calling the work kata; Flavkkou, contra Flaccum. The preposition eij" in eij" Flavkkon can certainly not have the sense of katav with genitive (“against”) and neither can katav or prov" with the accusative. So we are left with either simply Flavkko" or eij" Flavk kon, both of them being rather neutral titles: “(On) Flaccus.” Since our earliest witness, Eusebius, refers to the work with the simple title Flaccus and receives support for this from Photius, it has a good chance of being the original one, although the reading eij" Flavkkon in two important manuscripts cannot be ruled out entirely. Non liquet. Lit.: Reiter 1915:xlvii-xlviii; Balsdon 1934:221-222; Box 1939:xxxivxxxviii; Leisegang 1941:48-49; Smallwood 1961:36-43; Colson 1962:xvixxvi; Hennig 1975:164-173; Morris in Schürer 1973/87:III 859-864; Kraus 1994:480-481; Meiser 1999:418 (on double titles of the type Flavkko" h] peri; pronoiva" see the material collected by SaffreySegonds 2001:49 note 2).

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Part I. Flaccus’ Persecution of the Jews (§§1-96) §§ 1-7: Flaccus’ promising start In the opening paragraphs Philo sketches Flaccus as a very capable and responsible governor (in this respect he even surpassed his predecessors, says Philo in §8). Since this sketch shows that he was able to fulfil his duties in an exemplary way, the section is primarily designed to serve as a foil against which Flaccus’ later malfunctioning and malicious scheming stands out in all the sharper contrast, as Philo himself explicitly says in §7: “I praise Flaccus not because it is the right thing to praise an enemy but in order to enable myself to expose his wickedness even more clearly.” The rhetorical function of this section is to drive home to the reader that Flaccus’ ability to be a good governor makes him all the more responsible for the catastrophic events in the summer of 38 CE. §1. After Sejanus ...: On deuvtero~ see below. Lucius Aelius Sejanus was appointed praefectus praetorio by Tiberius in 14 CE and soon became sole commander of the praetorian guards (the cohortes praetorianae, which were responsible for order and safety in the imperial palaces; see Gutsfeld 2001). Sejanus’ influence on the emperor was very great and his power increased over the years (Hennig 1975: passim; Levick 1976:148-155; Kornemann 1980:158-170; Eck 1996). In 30 CE, he was elected consul for the next year with Tiberius and he hoped for more, possibly even a partnership with the emperor. But when he was accused of planning the assassination of the future emperor Gaius (Caligula), he was arrested and executed (in 31). In Legat. 159-160 Philo says that Sejanus had invented false slanders against the Jews in Rome “because he wished to do away with the nation, knowing that it would take the sole or the principal part in opposing his unholy plots and actions, and would defend the emperor when in danger of becoming the victim of treachery” (see Smallwood 1961 and Pelletier 1972 ad loc.). There is no further evidence to support this statement, not even in Josephus who devotes much attention to Sejanus. So there may be some reason to doubt what Philo says here; his description of the affair is probably somewhat exaggerated (but see Slingerland 1997:71-72, 232-233, 240). Eusebius, however, says that Philo wrote that Sejanus wanted to eradicate the entire Jewish nation (both in Hist. Eccl. 2.5.7 and in Chron., year 21 of Tiberius [vol. 1, p. 176 ed. Helm]), and it has been argued that

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§§ 1-7

he is referring not to the short opening remark of Flacc. but to a lost work of Philo in which the persecutions by Sejanus were dealt with on their own and to which Flacc. was the sequel (see Smallwood 1961:3643; Hennig 1975:165-168; Morris 1987:860-861). Eusebius may have based his remark on Legat. 159-160 (quoted above), but it seems probable that Philo did write a separate work on Sejanus (see Introd., ch. 1). Philo says here (Flacc. 1) that Sejanus wanted to do injustice to the entire nation (sumpa'n ajdikh'sai to; e[qno"). It has been suggested that Sejanus was the driving force behind Tiberius’ measure to expel the Jews from Rome or Italy in 19 CE (thus Box 1939: 68 and cf. Kraus 1967:39; Tacitus, Ann. 2.8, speaks of an expulsion from all of Italy; Suetonius, Tib. 36, says from Rome only), but this measure was directed not only against the Jews but also, and primarily, against the Isis-cult (see Hennig 1975:161-164, and esp. Gruen 2002:35-36). Be that as it may, Philo’s tantalizingly brief remark does show that according to Philo “the Jews could no longer be confident about the emperor’s attitude to their concerns, and that the influence of particular individuals in the imperial court could largely determine their fortunes” (Barclay 1996:301). And it is true that “if Philo devoted a whole book, now lost, to Sejanus’ anti-Jewish policy, the threat was presumably serious” (Smallwood 1976:202 note 5). But Smallwood 1987:127 rightly remarks that Josephus’ complete silence about Sejanus’ supposed plans against the Jews suggests that they were actually far less serious than Philo would have us believe. All this must remain uncertain and, anyway, Philo here implies that the threat of Sejanus was hardly over when the next one (deuv t ero~) made already its appearance in the person of Flaccus. For a detailed analysis and balanced discussion of this whole passage see Hennig 1975:160-179, esp. 169-173, who comes to this conclusion: “So erscheint der Verdacht durchaus berechtigt, daß Philo den Versuch unternommen hat, unter bewußter Verschleierung der Tatsachen das einmalige Vorgehen gegen die Juden unter der Regierung des Tiberius, nämlich das vom Jahre 19, das er wohl nicht gut völlig verschweigen konnte, auf das Konto Sejans zu setzen. Dazu war es vor allem notwendig, den Zeitpunkt im unklaren zu lassen und, ohne daß dies ausdrücklich gesagt wird, den Eindruck zu erwecken, daß die Attacke Sejans gegen die Juden seinem Sturz unmittelbar vorausging. Denn erst damals und nicht schon im Jahre 19 konnte ihm dann auch die volle Verantwortung zugeschoben werden” (173). It was only in this way that Philo could maintain his theory of God’s terrible punishment of the

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enemies of the Jews (Nestle 1936:263). On Philo’s portrait of Sejanus see also Lémonon 1981:224-225 and Barraclough 1984:471-472. Avillius Flaccus: See Introd. ch. 5, Excursus. continued his policy of persecuting the Jews: lit. “took over [from him] the attack against the Jews.” Although “took over” (diadev c etai) suggests an immediate continuation of Sejanus’ policy, in actual fact seven years elapsed between Sejanus’ death in 31 and the pogrom in 38. But Philo seems to imply that when, after Sejanus’ death, Flaccus was appointed in 32 CE, he also immediately (as deuvtero~) took over Sejanus’ heritage (thus Smallwood 1976:201; cf. Sly 1996:168), even though this is contradicted by what he himself says in §§2-5. By attributing to Flaccus an anti-Jewish frame of mind from the very beginning, Philo “avoids any suggestion of Jewish culpability for the troubles which were to follow” (Barraclough 1984:463). he had less resources and occasions to do so: Because Flaccus had a much less central and powerful position than Sejanus. irreparable evils: These are described in detail in §§41-96. everyone everywhere: pantacou' pavnta". Philo is fond of this kind of alliterating paronomasia; see the instances collected by Reiter 1915:li; for the rhetorical theory of paronomasia see Lausberg 1963:90 and Anderson 2000:93; cf. Quintilian 9.3.66. It is unclear what Philo means when he says that Flaccus “tried to bring everyone everywhere within his field of fire.” It would seem that he is implying that Flaccus’ anti-Jewish plans of action were quite far-reaching and aimed at more than just the Jewish population of Alexandria, but he does not tell us how he knew. This exaggerating statement is probably meant to make unambiguously clear to the reader how evil Flaccus’ intents were, no better than those of the notoriously malignant Sejanus. It is a typical case of Philonic tendentious generalization. to achieve their malignant designs: On katorqou'n “pour désigner le succès des malfaiteurs” see Nikiprowetzky in Winston-Dillon 1983:73. §2. the friends of the emperor: friends = eJtai'roi = amici. Flaccus was an amicus Caesaris, a somewhat formal title for a member of the informal circle of courtiers who were the emperor’s main advisors. In literary evidence from the imperial period we find accounts of the emperors consulting their amici. They were favored members of the equestrian and senatorial ordines (Millar 1977:110-122, esp. 119 note 66 for references). Tiberius divided his amici into classes (Suetonius,

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Tib. 46; Seneca, De benef. 6:33-34). According to the New Testament, the governor of Judaea, Pilate, too, was an amicus of Tiberius (John 19:12; see Barrett 1978:543). the prefect of Alexandria and the country around it: The praefectus Alexandreae et Aegypti (often more briefly praefectus Aegypti = e[parco" Aijguvptou) was the Roman governor of all Egypt consisting of both Alexandria proper (usually called Alexandria ad Aegyptum!) and the chôra (‘country’), the rest of Egypt; cf. in §5 “throughout the city and the country” (the constitutional separation of Alexandria from Egypt probably dates back to Ptolemaic times; Huzar 1988:622 with note 8, contra Fraser 1972: I.107-108). This prefect usually served for a term of one to three years, but sometimes for more than four or five. Tiberius had a policy of keeping officials in provinces longer than usual; see Josephus, Ant. 18.168-178, and Tacitus, Ann. 1.80. The prefect was mostly someone of equestrian rank and, under the JulioClaudians, his job was deemed so important that he received proconsular powers and surpassed all the other imperial prefectures (Huzar 1988:658). His position had a special weight since Egypt was the granary of the Roman Empire, especially of the city of Rome itself (cf. Acts 27:6). His most important duties were representing imperial authority, commanding the Roman legions, keeping the unruly population under control in view of the levying of taxes, and administering justice (Eck 2001:246-249). For lists of praefecti Aegypti see Stein 1950; Reinmuth 1954 and 1956; Schwartz 1982; Bureth 1988; Bastianini 1988; more references in Rupprecht 1994:70. after the death of Hiberus: M. Antonius Hiberus was an imperial freedman who worked in Egypt as a high financial official in the imperial service from 26-28 CE. Hiberus was appointed (vice-) praefectus Aegypti by Tiberius in 32, but he died soon thereafter (Mélèze Modrzejewski 1990:VII.67 with note 48; Eck 1998:532). The reading Hibêrou is a widely accepted conjecture of Reiter (1915:li) for the mss.’s Sebêrou (G: bêrou) on the basis of the information given by Cassius Dio 58.19.6: “Meanwhile Vitrasius Pollio, the governor of Egypt, died, and he [Tiberius, in 32] entrusted the province for a time to a certain Hiberus, an imperial freedman” (cf. Pelletier 1967:45 note 6 and, on Cassius Dio’s mistake about Vitrasius Pollio, who in fact was Flaccus’ successor, see Schwartz 1982). See further Stein 1950:25-26; Bureth 1988:476. his excellence: kalokagaqiva, a favorite term of Philo (he uses it 77 times), often used for the superior spiritual qualities of biblical

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heroes such as the patriarchs and Moses. On kalokagaqiva in Philo see Runia 1997:9-12. In the following words (“prudent, persevering, acute in devising and carrying out his plans, very eloquent and quick at understanding”) Philo goes to great length in emphasizing Flaccus’ highly promising start in order to serve as a foil to his behavior after Tiberius’ death. In §4 he even speaks of Flaccus’ “illustrious and kingly nature.” quick at understanding what was left unsaid better even than what was said: “Hyperbole qui ne trompe personne” (Pelletier 1967:46 note 1). On to; hJsucazovmenon in the sense of ‘what is left unsaid’ see Box 1939:70. §3. complex and diversified: The adjectives poluvtropo" and poikivlo" underscore the variety and complexity of Flaccus’ tasks but, as in the previous paragraph, here again Philo goes to great lengths to stress how capable a governor Flaccus had been in the first five years of his term (32-37 CE). See Philo’s own summary in §8: “In the first five years — that is, when the emperor Tiberius was still alive — he not only maintained peace but also governed with such energy and vigor that he surpassed all his predecessors.” In §§9ff., however, the sudden decline sets in. His secretaries were a superfluous crowd: On the complicated bureaucracy in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt see Box 1939:70; Rupprecht 1994:43-93; esp. Fraser 1972: chs. 2 and 3, and Haas 1997: ch. 3. A very helpful chart showing the complex structure of the bureaucracy in Roman Egypt is to be found in Bowman 1986:67. This complex bureaucratic system is mentioned here only in order to highlight Flaccus’ competence, even brilliance: he “surpassed” (uJperbalei'n) all the officials in the understanding of the system. §4. All matters pertaining to financial accountancy and the administration of revenues were dealt with competently by him: Cf. §133: “For it was impossible that the governors, who were in charge of such a vast country, could remember all the cases in that constant stream of both private and public new affairs, especially as they had not only to administer justice but also received the calculations of the revenues and taxes, the scrutiny of which took up the greater part of the year.” Even so, Flaccus managed to do very well, says Philo in this, undoubtedly exaggerated, report (on the fact that he does so for the purposes of contrast, see the first note ad §7). “Matters of financial accountancy” (logismoiv) and “the administration of revenues” (hJ tw'n

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prosodeuomevnwn dioivkhsi") refer to the assessment and levying of the various taxes imposed by the Romans (inter alia the hated polltax, laographia, on which see CPJ 1.60). Philo praises Flaccus’ competence, although 30 years later Philo’s own nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander, suggests that Flaccus may have been too mild in exaction; see his edict in OGIS 669:26-28 (see above in the Introduction, the Excursus on Flaccus). For the complex taxing system in Roman Egypt in general see the brief introduction with extensive bibliography in Rupprecht 1994:74-82; also Lewis 1983:159-176. a more illustrious and kingly nature: lamprotevra kai; basilikh; fuvsi~. This is the highest praise possible in Philo’s mouth. For the idea of a “kingly nature” see Mos. 1.153 and 2.2 (on Moses); cf. Post. 101-102. with greater freedom: meta; pleivono" parrhsiva". The word parrhsiva here seems to be used, as Colson remarks (1941:304 note b), in a wider sense than the usual “freedom of speech;” it rather denotes self-confidence and outspokenness in behavior (see the reference to Flaccus’ “stateliness” when walking, in the following line). For the large bibliography on parrhsiva see RBLG 418; add Saffrey-Segonds 2001:101-102 note 4. ostentation: tu'fo" = delusion, affectation, humbug, nonsense (LSJ). It usually has a negative connotation, also in Philo who uses it 56 times, for instance in Legat. 116 for Gaius’ extreme vanity. Cf. also Plato, Phaedr. 230a; Sextus Emp., Adv. math. 8.5; for other instances see Goodenough 1938:23-26, 33-36; Box 1939:71; Krauss 1934:522; and the Philo Index 341. Even though Philo admits that “ostentation is very useful for a ruler,” also for Flaccus, he seems to anticipate already here his later criticisms of the man. important cases: For instance, those involving capital punishment. with the magistrates: meta; tw'n ejn tevlei, i.e., with officials at a lower local level, for instance Lampo as described in §§131-134. Each year the prefect left Alexandria for a period of some four months and travelled through the country according to a fixed time schedule in order to deal with legal and civil questions, in which he needed the assistance of these local officials; “he held assizes, received petitions from grievants, and scrutinized the accounts and performances of the local administrators” (Lewis 1983:19). See further Lewis 1983:45-48, 185-195; Rupprecht 1994:69-72; esp. Delia 1991:98-107 (147-158 presents lists of Alexandrian magistrates). a motley crowd of people from all quarters: lit. migavdwn kai; sugkluvdwn ajnqrwvpwn o[clon, “a mass of promiscuously and indiscriminately

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mixed humans.” Polybius, too, calls the Alexandrians migav d e", a “medley” of Greeks of all sorts (34.14.5; he is not implying an admixture of Egyptian blood, see Davis 1951:69-70). In Flacc. Philo very often refers, in a variety of ways, to the Alexandrian “mob” (see §§4, 5, 19, 33, 35, 41, 65, 80, 82, 135-136 etc.; cf. also Legat. 67, 120, 132, 226, 252) for which he felt such a great contempt. That Flaccus kept the mob in their place is in Philo’s eyes a proof of his capability and efficiency as a ruler. Flaccus apparently not only shut down the clubs of the city (see immediately below), but he also forbade large gatherings of Alexandrians for fear of political conspiracy; for ejpisunivstasqai in the sense of “conspiring” see LSJ s.v. II 4. he also prohibited the clubs and associations (eJtaireiva" kai; sunovdou"): Almost every town and city in the Roman empire had its clubs and associations (thiasoi, synodoi, hetaireiai, eranoi; collegia, sodalitates), Egypt was no exception (Poland 1909; San Nicolò 1913-15; Boak 1937; Danker 1992; Kloppenborg & Wilson 1996; further bibliography in Rupprecht 1994:106). They were “voluntary associations of persons more or less permanently organized for the pursuit of a common end, and so distinguishable both from the state and its component elements on the one hand, and on the other from temporary unions for ephemeral purposes” (OCD 351). There were religious guilds (e.g., those of the artists of Dionysus or the worshippers of Zeus Hypsistos) and secular ones (e.g., those of fellow workers in the same craft or trade, e.g. silversmiths [see Acts 19:25]), although this separation between sacred and profane is somewhat anachronistic for our period; further there were also domestic collegia consisting of the slaves (and freedmen) of large households. Quite often their main purpose was to foster social life among their members and to give them a sense of belonging. Philo knows various associations in Alexandria but is very critical of them; he suggests that membership of such clubs could easily lead to lascivious behaviour (Seland 1996). In §§135ff. he will make clear that he regards these clubs as the hotbeds of anti-Jewish agitation in the city and as the sally-ports of gangs of hooligans (there he uses the less common term klinê alongside synodos, on which see Seland 1996:113). There Philo emphasizes the elements of excessive drinking (cf. “like inebriates” here) and the forging of political intrigues and conspiracies (cf. Ebr. 20-26 and Legat. 312, where he contrasts these clubs with the edifying gatherings of Jewish communities, on which see Seland 1996:114-124). Other ancient authors, too, mention the notoriety of the Alexandrian

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clubs, e.g., Athenaeus, Deipn. 246C; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 32.70 (see further Pelletier 1967:46 note 3; Box 1939:72 for non-literary evidence; Bowman 1986:212; Barry 1993). Philo therefore praises Flaccus for his closure of the clubs, which may have been meant as a measure to prevent any recurrence of the events described in more detail in §§ 135-145 (Isidorus’ agitation against Flaccus with the help of the clubs of which he was the leader), according to a not improbable suggestion of Smallwood (1976:236 note 64). Since Flaccus took these measures during the reign of Tiberius, who had a great distrust of this type of associations, his action may also have been a direct consequence of the imperial policy in general (Cotter 1996:78-88). §5. he had established law and order: For “law and order” the Greek text has euj n omiv a (see the literature in RBLG 289). What Philo is probably referring to is Flaccus’ large-scale collecting of clandestine weapons in the year 33/34, which he describes in §§92-93 (see ad loc.). Apparently the catch of arms then was enormous. throughout the city and the country: see ad §2. he proceeded ... to concentrate his attention on ...: The Greek is unclear here: ejfhvdreuen. The usual meaning of ejfedreuvw is “to lie in wait (for an opportunity to attack),” but it developed the sense of “to watch for ...” and even “to help” (as in Migr. 57). See the note in Pelletier 1967:48 note 2. What is meant here is — in view of the immediately following participles ejktavttwn, sugkrotw'n, gumnavzwn (on which see below) — that Flaccus paid attention to putting the army in the necessary order again. the armed forces: Egypt was garrisoned by a standing army of three legions, one of which was stationed on the borders of Alexandria, and nine auxiliary cohorts, says Strabo 17.1.12 (797), but by Tiberius’ time there may have been only two legions (he reduced their number to two by 23 CE; cf. Tacitus, Ann. 4.5). The total number of soldiers probably never exceeded 18,000 (Pelletier 1967:48 note 3; Box 1939:73-4). Bibliography on the army in Roman Egypt in Devijver 1974 and Rupprecht 1994:85-86. by setting them in array and disciplining them, and by training ...: jEjktavttein is “to draw out in battle order” or “to keep muster-roll of,” but according to Box 1939:74 here the sense could be “detailing for duties” (see, however, Pelletier 1967:49 note 4). Sugkrotei'n is the more technical drilling of the troops; gumnavzein is the training in more general sense, including inculcating a morale as the following lines make clear.

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not to deprive the soldiers of their pay ... acts of bandrity and robbery: Box 1939:74 remarks about the withholding of soldiers’ pay: “I can find no parallel to or corroboration of this abuse.” But this detail can hardly have been made up by Philo. Even though non-payment of wages cannot be confirmed from other sources, we do know that for one reason or another, often out of discontent with their wages, Roman soldiers tried to get some extra income. In Luke 3:14 John the Baptist says to some of them: “Rob no one by violence or false accusations, and be content with your wages” (referred to by De Vries 1999:261). First century CE documentary evidence for exactions by troops in Egypt is presented by Box 1939:74-75 (e.g., OGIS 2.665), who remarks: “The lack of any stipend for pocket-money (...) helps to explain these exactions.” See on extortion by soldiers also the useful “Note complémentaire” in Pelletier 1967:157-158 and Lewis 1983:172-176. outside their military service: e[xw tw'n kata; th;n strateivan. Peace-time service of the army consisted in such occupations as policing the country districts and the construction and maintenance of roads and canals. But these are not the kind of activities Philo has in mind here, he is still referring to the above mentioned undisciplined behavior. As Box 1939:75 rightly remarks, “the presence of an army of occupation in a city the inhabitants of which resented the domination of Rome required the most rigid discipline.” Gerschmann ad loc. refers to 2 Tim. 2:4: “No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him.” But in the NT passage the emphasis is on total dedication to the commander, whereas here the point is to abstain from unauthorized activities. to keep in mind: The word memnhmevno" is taken by Box 1939:5 to be correlated not to the soldier who is the subject of the verb periergavzhtai, but to Flaccus who is the subject of ejfhvdreuen: “he remembered that it was to maintain peace that he was appointed,” which is grammatically defensible. Both Colson and Pelletier take exception to this view: “The run of the sentence is against it (...). The soldier may very properly be admonished to remember that he is a policeman as well” (Colson 1941:306-7 note a); “C’est à chacun des hommes de troupe, en effet, qu’il est recommandé (...) de se souvenir que le maintien de la tranquillité de la population fait partie, elle aussi, de son devoir de soldat” (Pelletier 1967:49 note 8). The latter interpretation is the more feasible one.

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§6. Perhaps someone will say now: Introducing a fictive interlocutor is typically diatribe style, thus providing a degree of argument; see Stowers 1992; Schmeller 1987 in the various paragraphs on “dialogische Struktur.” Here the anonymous speaker stands for the reader who is surprised to find praise for Flaccus whereas he expects the contrary. The rebuttal comes in §7. dear fellow: For this use of ou|to~ as a vocative see LSJ s.v. C I 5 and the literature in RBLG 407. Have you lost your mind ...: On a [ r a expressing surprise see Denniston 1954:35-36. No, I have not gone mad: ouj mevmhna. Cf. what Paul the apostle says before Festus in Acts 26:25: ouj maivnomai. See Helyer 2002:314. consistent argument: pravgmato" ajkolouqiva . In Aet. 112 Philo uses pragmavtwn ajkolouqiva in the sense of an unbroken sequence of events. Here the meaning is rather “die Logik eines Sachverhaltes” (Gerschmann), “what is consistent with an undertaking” (Box), “the sequence of an argument” (Colson), “la suite d’un sujet” (Pelletier). The logic announced here follows in §7. §7. I praise Flaccus ... in order to enable myself to expose his wickedness even more clearly: Bell 1924:16 rightly says: “Philo’s remark shows a temper remote indeed from that of the historian.” As a bad ruler Flaccus is all the more guilty because he had shown his obvious capacity to rule so well. Of course “this contrast was largely of Philo’s making, but the lack of information from any other source on the nature of Flaccus’ rule prevents us from reaching a final verdict” (Barraclough 1984:461; cf. Sevenster 1975:21). There is a striking parallel in Legat. 8-13 where Philo does the same with regard to the beginning of Gaius’ rule: his first seven months are described as a kind of golden age, but then follows the great contrast, as here. Pardon ... conscience: Here Philo explains what he means by Flaccus’ wickedness. His sins were not committed out of ignorance (ajgnoiva)/ but knowingly and willingly (ejx ejpisthvmh"), and for that reason there is no pardon to be given. Because his evil deeds were perpetrated deliberately and on purpose, there is no defense. The distinction between sins committed on purpose and those committed unwillingly or out of inadvertence is important to Philo (see Imm. 128, Ebr. 125, Spec. 1.235-237); it has an Old Testament background (e.g., Num. 15:22-31); see Klauck 1994:44. The image of being condemned before the tribunal of one’s own conscience “fait partie

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de l’imagerie judiciaire courante dans Philon” (Pelletier 1967:50); see the references in Box 1939:76 and Philo Index 321-322. Philo saw conscience as a faculty scrutinizing conduct and passing judgement upon it (cf. to; th'" dianoiva" bouleuthvrion in §102); it is both immanent in the soul and sent by God. See further Chadwick 1978; Eckstein 1983 (121-132 on Philo); and esp. Klauck 1994. For general bibliography RBLG 478.

§§ 8-20: Flaccus’ degeneration After these promising years, the ascension of Caligula marks the sudden and unexpected start of the decline of Flaccus’ good government. Due to past events related to Caligula himself and his family, in which Flaccus had been involved, he becomes frightened. Especially the death of his powerful friend Macro, who had been influential at the court in Rome, made him desperate. Flaccus, therefore, becomes liable to pressure and lends his ear to the worst possible advisors. Dark portraits of these advisors — which later turn out to be the principal anti-Jewish agitators — are pictured by Philo. The punchline is in §19, “The ruler became a subject and the subjects became leaders.” For the elitist and aristocratic thinker Philo is, this loss of control and the consequent reversal of roles is the strongest disqualification he could think of. §8. six years ... the first five years: Usually the length of a prefect’s term depended upon the emperor’s goodwill. Flaccus’ term of 6 years was no exception; his predecessor Galerius even served for 15 years (from 16-31 CE). “Five years” is not completely accurate, however, since Flaccus probably entered upon office in the first half of the year 32 (or even January 32), and even though Tiberius died in March 37, Flaccus remained in office till the middle of October of 38 (see ad §116), so he served more than six and a half years. See on all this, against Groag-Stein 1933:290 and Box 1939:77, now convincingly Schwartz 1982. What is called “his last year” in §9 actually lasted from March 37 till October 38, which in Philo’s usual way of reckoning should actually be counted as two years. he surpassed all his predecessors: Flaccus had 13 predecessors (from 30 BCE – 32 CE). For a list of names see the references ad §2 and the recent bibliography in Rupprecht 1994:70. Philo now sums up his

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praise for Flaccus’ admirable governorship before he begins to describe his degeneration in §9. §9. But in his last year, after Tiberius had died and Gaius been appointed emperor: Note the particle dev, here strongly adversative, indicating the complete change in Flaccus’ behaviour. Philo emphasizes that this turnabout had everything to do with Caligula’s accession to the throne in 37. In his Legatio ad Gaium he will stress more heavily than in Flacc. the evil role of the emperor. On Gaius in general see the important monograph by Barrett 1989. For Philo’s view of Tiberius see Niehoff 2001:119-128. he began to let everything slip from his hands: The image is that of a charioteer who is losing control of his chariot and horses. Driving a chariot, like steering a ship, is a common image for rulership since Plato (e.g., Resp. 566d2). See the parallels in Saffrey-Segonds 2001:85 note 23 (on Marinus, Procl. 8 toi'" ta;" hJniva" e[cousi th'" Aijguvptou). Loss of control is something Philo more often speaks of in very derogatory terms; see ad §7 and cf. also the following note and the chapters in which Flaccus loses control of his own emotions (§§176ff.). the endless stream of tears ... as from a fountain: This description of Flaccus’ exaggerated reaction is meant to demonstrate his lack of enkrateia, according to Philo the supreme Jewish and Roman virtue, which the Egyptians, too, are lacking. According to Niehoff 2001:134135, this loss of his wits characterizes Flaccus as an “Egyptian” who has defected from true Roman values. he had sided with the party of the natural rather than the adopted children: This is an important point, because Flaccus had indeed played a role in the struggle about the succession of Tiberius that was not likely to earn him the favor of Caligula. Tiberius had declared in his will that his grandson Tiberius Gemellus (a child of Tiberius’ son Drusus, who died in 23 CE) would be his heir together with Gaius. Gemellus belonged to the gnhv s ioi (here translated by “natural children”); see Smallwood 1961:169-172. His cousin Gaius was the son of Tiberius’ nephew Germanicus (died in 19 CE), who had been adopted (qetov") into the gens Julia. Both had supporters in their struggle, although Gemellus’ only named supporter was Flaccus (Barrett 1989:339 note 79) and we do not know whether he had (m)any more. Gaius won because he argued that Gemellus was only a child (he was 18, Gaius 25); he obtained from the Roman senate the cancellation of Tiberius’ will, made Gemellus his adopted son, and

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later forced him to commit suicide (described in detail by Philo in Legat. 22-31). The personal friends of the emperor, however, to whom Flaccus belonged (see §2), were of the opinion that Gemellus had to be coequal with Gaius. So Flaccus had bet on the wrong horse, and in view of Gaius’ character he had every reason to become nervous. Sherwin-White 1972, however, thinks that Philo is not well informed here since Flaccus can hardly have played a role in advocating the claims of Gemellus during the last five years of Tiberius’ principate for the simple reason that he was too far away from Rome. But being away from Rome does not imply complete loss of influence there. he was one of those who had conspired against Gaius’ mother: Another important reason for Flaccus’ anxiety was that Flaccus’ had played an active role in the affair in which Gaius’ mother, Vipsania Agrippina (14 BCE-33 CE), who had accused Tiberius of having ordered her husband’s death, was finally sent into exile by the emperor in 29 CE (Suetonius, Tib. 53). On Agrippina see Barrett 1989:4-24; and Kienast 1996. matters which led to her execution: According to Suetonius (Tib. 53) and Tacitus (Ann. 6.25) Agrippina starved herself to death, but there were rumors that Tiberius had her put to death, which Philo’s version seems to reflect here and which Tacitus’ version does not exclude (“she killed herself — unless food was denied so that her death should look like suicide”). See Sly 1996:76. So it was also fear of being held guilty that caused the neglect of his duties: gegonw;" kai; dia; fovbon aJlwvsew" ejpilelhsmevno". The word ejpilelhsmevno" is a crux. The existing translations vary: “His fear of being held guilty on this count caused him to neglect his duties” (Colson). “Through fear of conviction he had neglected to play his part in the trial” (Box). “La crainte d’être pris l’eût rendu négligent” (Pelletier). “Aus Furcht, dessen überführt zu werden, war er gelähmt” (Gerschmann), the latter based upon Theiler’s conjecture pepedhmevno". Reiter ad loc. declares ejpilelhsmevno" to be corrupt but suggests no other reading. Roos 1935:241 conjectures